I am so excited about the new prints I'm working on!

Here is a preview of one of them: my new moth print! Just messing around with the colour blocking in my classic colour scheme, but I think I'll come up with a new scheme for this one. More photos of new product coming soon. :)

Organic cotton bias tape, do you even exist in this world? Must I make you myself? So very frustrating.

Found this video on the hunt though; what a clever way to make your own!



I wish I had seen this trick during thesis when I was making all my own bias tape out of repurposed garments! You can't know everything all at once I suppose.

I made a delivery today to the Evergreen Brickworks lovely new Garden Market to replenish their stock of our teatowels. Seriously awesome little shop, I highly recommend checking it out! I also love that delivering product to them gives me an excuse to take a bike ride in the Don Valley. Took a few pics on this rainy spring day!

High water on the Don

Baltimore Oriole

Spores!

I had an enjoyable time last weekend checking out The Show Off: the 96th annual Graduate Exhibition at OCADU. Below are some pictures of my favourites! (as you may notice, I have a serious fibre bias).

Tara Lee Towers

TLT makes cross stitch cool again. The use of human hair in her work I find to be simultaneously appealing and disturbing. I particularly loved her crocheted heart, made of human hair which she spun herself. What I found most impressive about this body of work was the range of her mediums, all executed with such skill. Spinning, knitting, crocheting, drawn-thread embroidery, cross-stitching and ceramics, TLT is a true renaissance woman!

Leanne Rhem
Leanne's work addresses the experiences of being female. I loved her Armour piece; fierce, right? I couldn't get a very good picture because of the lighting, so I have borrowed this one from her website.

Joanna Schleimer

Jo was this years Material Art and Design Medal Winner. What an amazingly talented maker this girl is! Her neutral, soft-spoken palette and delicate materials seem to understate the labourious efforts required in creating these textiles. Hand-woven out of linen (my one true love) and meticulously inlayed and surface embroidered. I would very much like to see this work in my own home.

Also note worthy were Alea Drain and Megan Skyvington's work; both drawing and painting majors with an afinity for fibrous techniques. Check out more pic's here

Generally, when I'm not at Harbourfront, I'm at OCADU (Ontario College of Art and Design University) where I'm the class assistant for the fibre studio. I feel seriously lucky to be involved in two amazing communities, especially when I score sweet equipment that's heading for the garbage!

A couple of months ago when we were cleaning up the studio at school, I rescued an old-fashioned laundry mangler from pending disposal and brought it to its new home on the Harbour. I'm pretty sure that the only use it has had in the last 5 years was when my garment construction teacher showed me how to press pleats into a dress I was making back in 4th year. He said "a mangler pleats faster and more uniformly than using an iron" and I had no idea what he was talking about because I'd never heard of a mangler, and by the name it certainly didn't sound pleasant or easy to use. When he brought me over to ol' Automagic I laughed; I told him I'd always thought it was in the studio for decoration (as you can see, it's got a bit of old-timey charm).

I was glad to bring Automagic to the Front with me because I felt personally connected to this neglected piece of equipage, and because I'm seriously bored of ironing tea towels! My

studiomate, Julie, makes fun of me because when I started at the studio last summer I commented that I 'loved ironing' and 'found it relaxing'. Not so much anymore, after ironing over 200 yds worth of fabric over the past year (though it is nice to zone out once and a while, i guess).

I finally set it up and started working on it this weekend, and it really is magic. It's at least 60 years old and works like new. Above is a picture of my other studiomate, Shuyu, trying it out. It's basically a rotating iron, so you feed your fabric etc. into the roller and it presses it, kind of like a pasta maker. I heart it.

Unfortunately though, I had to learn the hard way that the "Linen" setting is too hot, even for linen... after some yellowish burn marks on my first towel, I cranked the dial down to somewhere in between "wool" and "cotton". A wise decision, I think.

This guy is going to be my trusty assistant as I get ready for the Beaches Arts and Crafts Show coming up in a month. I hope the rain lets up by then!

This is really awkward trying to start a blog, so lets get this first post over with.

I like to spend my time making things.  Things that are mostly textile, almost always functional, often humorous and/or Canadian in subject matter and as low-impact environmentally as is within my reach.  

I am currently entering my second year at as an artist-in-residence at the Harbourfront Centre in Toronto where I make these aforementioned textile objects.  I am also entering my second year as co-owner of a domestic textile company, Freshly Printed.  

Being an entrepreneur of sorts, it was high time for me to tap into this so called information super highway with its supposed methods of social networking, and hence, this blog is born.

My posts are mostly going to be progress reports of my textile endeavours, but may occasionally stray to other areas of interest (namely my backyard farm and love of cooking and music).  I hope not to bore you, mystery reader, but I make no promises.