FiberPhiladelphia

FiberPhiladelphia March - April 2012 FiberPhiladelphia is an international biennial and regional festival for innovative fiber/textile art. Exhibitions are planned for 40 locations including major institutions and independent venues. They will include work by renowned international artists and a new generation of artists breaking into the field. In the past 20 years, the boundaries between High/Low art and medium specific recognition have been blurred. Unlike the other major craft media, textile artists have the freedom of transcending materials, unbound from tradition. Although many choose to continue to work with historic materials and methods, many have branched out to explore the infinite possibilities of materials and techniques. One can weave metal, clay, even light. Quilts are not necessarily bound by thread or cloth and vessels can be more than objects to contain physical matter; they can reject functionality and explore conceptual notions of spiritual and metaphysical containment. More at:

http://www.fiberphiladelphia.org/

Outstanding needlework by girls of Chester County

By Karla Klein Albertson

Fri, Jan. 20, 2012, 10:26 AM For The Inquirer

'In Stitches: Unraveling Their Stories," on view at the Chester County Historical Society through Sept. 7, brings together top-echelon needlework from the society's collection and the formidable textile archives of the Westtown SchoolThe examples chosen for the exhibition not only display clever composition and technical excellence, they also offer insight into the lives of the young women who made them.

This highly collectible needlework was made not by adult seamstresses, but by teen or even preteen girls, who executed samplers as part of their education. The youth of the stitchers is astonishing, especially when viewed in the light of modern values. These can soar into the five- or six-figure range at auction.

Well-known needlework specialist Amy Finkel, of the website samplings.com and the antiques shop M. Finkel & Daughter, emphasizes the importance of Chester County's contribution to the world of antique samplers. "The samplers made in Chester County in the late 18th and early 19th centuries are highly regarded because the teachers there took the art of sampler-making to new levels," she says. "Large, bold pictorial samplers with outstanding house and garden scenes animated with people and animals routinely appear on these samplers.

"It may be that competition for students led instructresses to develop more and more interesting compositions that would be taught to their students. And the vocabulary of stitches and techniques that they taught are of equally high quality."

Curator Ellen Endslow of the Chester County Historical Society worked in concert with Mary Brooks of the Westtown School to assemble the exhibition of 150 outstanding examples made between 1760 and 1840.

Endslow says, "Putting examples from the two collections together really adds something, because you do get to see how the Westtown samplers influenced sampler making elsewhere in the county."

Endslow is particularly fond of the highly decorative, pictorial needlework on display. One of the most colorful is a composition of two birds in a tree, stitched and hand-painted by Martha Vastine of Coatesville when she was about 11 years old.

As part of the goal of the exhibition, the maker's family history is well-documented. She was the daughter of Benjamin Vastine, who operated a store and tavern at "the Sign of the Golden Eagle" on Lancaster Pike.

Works stitched by students at the Westtown School, an important part of the exhibition, are prized by collectors. Still educating young people today, the Quaker school was established in Chester County in 1799. Girls coming to the school at that time were instructed to bring needle, thread, and scissors to begin their education.

Brooks, archivist of the school's collection, notes, "Westtown is one location where needlework was part of a girl's education, and a particular style developed here based on what was being done at Ackworth, a Quaker boarding school in England."

"Some very distinct designs and types of samplers developed," she says. "For instance, the darning sampler was worked with seven or so stitches used for mending different fabrics. Quaker samplers did tend to be more plain and more simple."

Westtown is only one part of the needlework world of Chester County. According to Brooks, the school's style became fairly well-known in Quaker circles because so many girls and teachers went on from Westtown to teach at other schools.

Several of the exhibits in the current show boldly state their Westtown affiliation. One, crafted by an anonymous needleworker, depicts the original four-story brick school building. Another, made by a student in the school's first class, has a central medallion embroidered with the name of the then-new institution.

The education of girls at Westtown, however, went far beyond what was then called women's work. Samplers also incorporated philosophical and religious quotations that students were expected to memorize.

Even more remarkable were the unique embroidered fabric globes produced at Westtown. Stitching details of continents and oceans on the three-dimensional creations helped reinforce the student's

What: "In Stitches: Unraveling Their Stories"

When: Through Sept. 7

Where: Chester County Historical Society, 225 N. High St., West Chester.

Information: chestercohistorical.org or 610-692-4800.

Texting Glove for the hearing impaired

What you see here in the picture is exactly what you think it is. The Texting Glove is essentially a device where you can use sign language to create a text message.

This device was introduced at Google’s Developers Day in Tel Aviv, by designers Oleg Imanilov, Zvika Markfield, and Tomer Daniel. It uses a gyroscope, an ADK Board, Lilypad Arduino, finger sensors, and an accelerometer.

There is a a video after the jump so you can see how it works. It looks like it has to be calibrated to work with individual hands.

When I first saw this, I thought it was a good idea, but then I thought: can’t the hearing impaired just send a text message with their hands? Then I had to think: I would love to use speech-to-text software.
As it is, speech to text isn’t quite as good as I want it to be. I would imagine that one day, speech to text will be just as good as real speech. Shouldn’t the hearing impaired have this same right? With the Texting Glove, that can happen.

Besides, the texting glove is good for texting and signing words, not just the tapping of letters. I wouldn’t be surprised if the hearing impaired could sign a text message faster than typing it. If so, then I see a good future for the Texting Glove.


show&Tell glove - introduction from sarohm on Vimeo.

Read more at: http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/20111216/texting-glove-hearing-impaired/

A Master of Embroidery Remembered

By SUZY MENKES

Published: December 12, 2011

PARIS — The wreaths, the sprays and the clusters of creamy white flowers — even an elegant boot fashioned out of rose petals — made a fitting backdrop at l’Église Saint-Roch for the departure of François Lesage, the artist of embroidery, mourned last week in the world of Paris couture.

Multimedia

The names on the floral tributes from Dior’s roses to Valentino’s lilies said it all. They included flowers from the house of Yves Saint Laurent, where embroidered

jackets re-creating the sunflowers and irises of Van Gogh were an artistic expression of opulence back in 1988.

Karl Lagerfeld, whose collaborations with Mr. Lesage over nearly 30 years helped produce the fabled 1996 re-creations of the Coromandel screens in Coco Chanel’s apartment, offered a wreath of roses, in tones from chalky white to clotted cream.

“He was fun, quite a number, always joking, with a drink and a cigarette, what the French call a ‘bon vivant’ and a very gifted person,” said Mr. Lagerfeld, who displayed the skills of the house of Lesage at his Indian-themed collection in Paris last week.

At the funeral, Christian Lacroix, who was taken under the wing of Mr. Lesage at the start of his career, recalled their first tense encounter when Mr. Lacroix, who was working at the fashion house of Jean Patou, had kept the famous embroiderer waiting. But from an initial frosty encounter came a warm friendship and close collaboration.

The church in Paris overflowed with the family of fashion, from designers including Azzedine Alaïa and Christian Loubutin to the “petites mains,” the artisan handworkers. Mr. Lesage’s own family spilled over the front rows: his son Jean-François, who established an embroidery studio in India; his daughter Marion, an artist, wearing a jacket with an embroidered heart from an early Lacroix collection and his son Jean-Louis, who read the speech prepared by his father last month when he was awarded France’s highest cultural honor: Maître d’Art.

In those words, Mr. Lesage, 82, talked about his “humble” métier and thanked the house of Chanel, which bought his business in 2002, securing its future. Chanel has done the same for other crafts, like the feather maker André Lemarié.

Mr. Lesage’s grandchildren also spoke, describing vacations in Corsica, where their nocturnal grandfather would play with their computer games half the night and then sweep them off on a boat in the morning.

Why was the death of this fashion figure, at a ripe old age, considered such a landmark moment in the couture world? Mr. Lesage, who took over the business from his father Albert in 1949, was one of the last links in a chain that stretches back to the golden era of haute couture. As a young man he was entranced by the silver screen and set up a business in America to support Hollywood costumers.

But he had known the playful designer Elsa Schiaparelli and had worked with Cristobal Balenciaga, whose studio was always a tomb of silence. His fruitful collaboration with Saint Laurent yielded dresses incorporating the birds of the artist Georges Braque and other art embroideries.

Mr. Lesage had moist eyes when he saw them paraded in what was one of the biggest fashion retrospectives ever presented — on a football pitch during the World Cup in France in 1998.

Mr. Lesage deeply appreciated the poetic essence of his work, saying “embroidery was the love of writing your dreams with a needle, with a pearl with anything that could enchant and bring tenderly to life a décor, an ambiance, a souvenir.”

Those words were at the heart of Mr. Lesage’s work. But the secret of his creative longevity was to embrace the new, as well as establishing profound relationships with designers, working in their individual cultures.

He had memories of watching Yves Saint Laurent going through Schiaparelli 1930s surrealist embroideries in the studio stock of 65,000 samples. And of remaking the original YSL Van Gogh jacket for a client to wear at a celebration of Mr. Lesage’s 50 years in fashion, which was filled with leggy Bluebell dancers, acrobats and jugglers.

Mr. Lesage found another soul mate in Jean Paul Gaultier, who pushed the boundaries of skill and taste to make a tribal reincarnation of a leopard skin couture outfit requiring 700 hours of work.

With haute couture a shrinking industry, is there still a demand for the extraordinary and the exceptional?

Mr. Lesage seemed to think so when in 1992 he set up his embroidery school on his premises in the Parisian district of Montmartre.

At the workshops of Ecole Lesage, the tulle is still stretched over wooden frames and jars are filled with glass beads, sequins, paillettes and pearls.

By serendipity, this technological age is learning to cherish once again handwork and artisanal skills that the haute embroiderer represented.

Mr. Lesage’s ebullient enthusiasm and prolific energy stayed with him to the end.

Or maybe a little longer. In the words of the priest, Father Christian Lancray-Javal, who helped to lay on the coffin a black lace shroud, hand-embroidered with moonlight dapples of silver, the indefatigable François Lesage might be up there now “embroidering the wings of angels.”

from NYT

More than just digital quilting

Technology and society: The “maker” movement could change how science is taught and boost innovation. It may even herald a new industrial revolution.

Read more at: http://www.economist.com/node/21540392

Chinese hackerspaces, or, what happens when a government is run by engineers

Nov. 24, 2011

Shanghai Government Technology committee has issued a call for a proposal to build 100 community hackerspaces with government funding for equipment. The communities in resident area are going to manage the spaces and pay for the materials. Each space is required to be at least 100 square meters, more than 200 days/year open, equipped with wood lathes, metal lathes, saws and drill grinding combined machine, milling machine and other tools.

Hackerspaces or creative spaces have been growing rapidly in China. The first one, XinCheJian, was started in Shanghai last November, by David Li and partner/project generator Ricky Ng-Adam.

Xinchejian is a non-profit hackerspace who aims to support, create and promote physical computing and open source hardware. People can exchange their ideas and expertise, get support from work on group and individual projects, and basically, as Ng-adam says, “having fun with technology.”

In 2010 Li formalized Shanghai Hackerspace's connection to the global network of hackerspace. Together with Ng-Adam they draw together hobbyists, electronic freaks, DIY lovers and makers in one place and share fascination for technology. One key player in Xinchejian is Min Lin Hsieh. She is Community organizer, taking care of finance, communication and marketing, as well as helping engineering projects and clubs. The three form a strong team by working together. Today Xinchejian has 100m2 studio full with computer spare parts, micro chips and DIY tools.

Read more at:

http://www.3ders.org/articles/20111124-hackerspaces-in-china.html

and...

http://hackaday.com/2011/11/27/chinese-hackerspaces-or-what-happens-when-a-government-is-run-by-engineers/

Visit to the Textile Museum at the Bank of Thailand

Textiles and the National Economy

Historically, textiles have been part of the revenue collected by the Thai monarchs from neighboring countries when they were under Thai rule such as Cambodia and Laos in the 15th and 19th centuries respectively. Tributes were also made to the monarchy in the form of textiles from provincial districts in Thailand which were called Muang. In turn, the Thai monarchs would reward their officers and noblemen with gifts of textiles, or even in lieu of their salaries. Particular textiles were designated to court use only, civil servants would be required to wear certain types of cloth to attend functions in the royal court, most of which they received from the monarch. Meanwhile, ordinary people wove their own fabric or exchanged textiles from neighbouring provinces. In the case of imported textiles, until the beginning of this century, the royal court controlled all imported textiles and arranged for certain qualities to be made available to the general public.

For more info go here

Faraday Curtain by Loop.pH

Commissioned for Bloomberg Philanthropy by art and design agency Arts Co, "Waste Not, Want It" is a series of specially commissioned art and design projects made almost entirely out of Bloomberg's waste.

Design studio Loop.pH's "Faraday Curtain" is made from hundreds of metres of discarded electrical cable, stripped of its inner core and conductive shielding and rethreaded into an intricately laced textile mesh. The resultant ephemeral textile enclosure provides a soft and sheer shielding from electro magnetic fields.

Loop.pH worked with a team of lace-makers to develop a methodology to work with this non-standard material. Lacemaking is a highly complex and computational method of manipulating many fibres into a cloth and is a dying textile tradition in the UK.

Read more: http://www.dexigner.com/news/24236#ixzz1exnSC5pZ

Upcoming Voodoo Doll Workshop with Catarina Mota on December 1st at Indiana University!

Soft Circuit Voodoo Doll Workshop

In this free workshop we'll cover the basics of soft circuits (materials and techniques) and then make folk art textile voodoo dolls whose eyes light up when punctured with a needle. All tools and materials (dolls, conductive spandex, conductive thread, etc.) will be provided. You may bring your own doll to modify, if you prefer!

Example dolls can be found at:

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/01/soft-circuit-voodoo-doll.html
http://blog.theleadingzero.com/?p=262

Catarina Mota | openMaterials.org
Catarina is co-founder of openMaterials (a research group dedicated to collecting and sharing data on uses and production methods of materials), of altLab (Lisbon's hackerspace), of fabriCulture (a project dedicated to promoting open source digital fabrication and maker culture in general), and a member of NYCResistor. She's also a PhD student researching social, cultural and political aspects of open source hardware and digital fabrication, a visiting scholar at ITP-NYU, and a fellow of the National Science and Technology Foundation of Portugal. Her maker activities center mostly around smart materials and digital fabrication. More info at www.openmaterials.org/catarina

Costura

On one of Barcelona’s cutest streets, (Doctor Dou), near one of the most perfect bakeries, (Reykavik), is a little store called Costura. Two friends decided that the city was in dire need of some serious sewing commodities and after much thought and care, their small dream was born. Asami and Sonia have created the perfect blend of quirky clothing, Japanese fabrics, sewing items, customizing kits and best of all, sewing machines that can be rented by the hour. As flats become smaller and smaller, there just isn’t any room (or money for that matter) to actually own a machine. Costura offers the perfect solution, just pop round and use one of their machines for a few hours.