The Stitch Up

Smithsonian Stitch Class

Last month I found a whole new obsession - fiber art classes at the Smithsonian!  Most of the classes are given at the S. Dillon Ripley Center which is this tiny building next to the Smithsonian Castle.  When you enter the Ripley Center you basically just walk down a spiral staircase into a long hallway of classrooms underground - it's pretty cool!  

I took the Haute Couture Embroidery Class which was taught by Elizabeth Lay who is a Decorative Arts Historian currently working at Montgomery History Museum.  She gave an awesome presentation on designers who use embroidery in their haute couture designs.  She talked about a few designers I knew about like Poiret, Vionnet and Worth, but she introduced us to several designers I wasn't aware of like Guo Pei - whose designs are so beautiful and Iris Van Herpen who  partners with NASA and is moving embroidery into a whole new dimension with 3d printing.

After the presentation, we moved on to designing our own haute couture buttons with a fun array of fabric and beads to choose from.  I think my only complaint would be that I could have used a little more time for working on the buttons, but that was mostly because after the presentation I was fairly overloaded with inspiration and just couldn't focus on one thing.  

I loved the set up of this class - learning and getting inspiration from current and vintage designers and then spending some time creating in a cool location.  I recommend the Smithsonian classes and am on the lookout for my next class!

Adventures in Stitching

October was a pretty fun month for craft outings.  Somehow, I had completely missed the fact that there is a textile museum just around the corner from my office.  The Textile Museum at George Washington University is a small museum but it has rotating exhibitions that are very interesting.  When I visited this week the two main exhibits were China: Through the Lens of John Thomson and Old Patterns, New Order: Socialist Realism in Central Asia.  The China exhibit was mostly really interesting photos of people in traditional clothes, but they had a few actual items of clothing as well and the embroidery was spectacular:

  


The Central Asia exhibit had a variety of really colorful fabrics.  The exhibit described these fabrics as a mix of modern and traditional design which you could really see:

It doesn't take too long to walk through the exhibits, but it's nice to have something so near by to take a little break during the day and look at pretty fabrics.  I think they update their exhibitions fairly often so it will be nice to check in once in a while and see what's new.

My big October crafting event was a needle lace class at The Williamsburg School of Needlework.  It was two days of learning needle lace technique and it was wonderful.  The teacher was really skilled and had us tatting almost immediately.  You can (hopefully) see my progress as we tried out different patterns and techniques.

 

I am already looking forward to going back for another class.  There is also some good bar-b-que, microbrews and of course Colonial Williamsburg nearby so it makes for a pretty nice craft weekend.

Now, it's time to start getting ready for some Christmas crafts.  I have a few things planned but always seem to add some last minute projects just to stress myself out.  I'm trying to wrap up crocheting a cowl before going full blown Christmas.  Hopefully I'll have that to show off here before highlighting my Christmas  projects.

Happy Fall everybody!

 

 

The Textile Museum

I've had a little more time for fun and crafting this last week and I used part of that time for an outing to The Textile Museum in DC with Kate.  The museum had an exhibition entitled "Art by the Yard: Women Design Mid-Century Britain" that Kate had read about and it was really fabulous.

It displayed fabric by designers Lucienne Day, Jacqueline Groag and Marian Mahler.  

 

The Textile Museum is small, but has a nice permanent collection and schedules really interesting temporary exhibitions.  Kate and I read about exhibitions through 2011 that we'd like to go back and see.

I couldn't take many photos inside the exhibition - there was no photography inside the gallery.  I did snap this shot at the entrance:

It gives an idea of the very cool fabric we had a chance to see.  Kate and I were mentally sewing up all of the fabrics into drapes, chairs, dresses, shirts - it was inspiring stuff.  And they did sell some of the fabric in the gift store.  But as it ran over $200.00 (OMG!!!!!) we decided against a purchase.

I remembered while we were strolling through the museum that I had bought a set of pattern books, one of which covered textile patterns from the 50s. It contains some of the fabric we saw in the exhibition by Day, Mahler and Groag.  V&A pattern books, series one is a set.  It contains four pattern books.  In addition to the Fifties patterns, there are pattern books covering William Morris, Indian Florals and Digital Pioneers. They all contain cd's with jpg images of the patterns that you can use for non-commercial purposes.  Here are just a few of the VERY cool images in the pattern book that we also saw at the Textile Museum:

Marian Mahler

Lucienne Day

Jaqueline Groag

It was a wonderful way to spend an afternoon.  Looking at beautiful and inspiring textiles and catching up with a good friend who appreciates (or obsessively LOVES) fabric like me!   

 

DC is the place to Be

We got a visit this summer from my brother, sister-in-law and the kids.  Besides being a super fun family they are a good looking group to boot.  Case in point:

 

Are they cute or what?  We tried to hit a little bit of everything while they were in town.  It wasn't easy with only a few days (and the report back from the family is that there were some blisters that resulted from the forced march we put them through) but we hit just about everything!

First off the monuments:

 

Sadly I had the date stamp on and couldn't figure out how to crop/remove it - but here are the boys lookin' cool in front of the Washington monument.  Then we hit the WWII:

 

And the monument that my youngest nephew had been looking forward to the most after seeing "Night at the Museum" - the Lincoln Memorial.  I yelled at the boys to "pose" at the top of the stairs and they took me a bit literally:

 

those boys crack me up on the regular!  They each got a moment with Abe:

 

 

We also hit the Korean and the Vietnam memorial while near the Lincoln.  At the Vietnam memorial we looked up the name of a close friend of my sister-in-law's father.  Jennie's dad was instrumental in getting a memorial to his friend erected in our home town.  We found the name and they made a rubbing for Jennie to get back to her Dad:

 

 

We capped that day off with a trip to the Air & Space museum.  The nephews hit the simulator before we left and had a crazy faux-flight that looked vomit-inducing to me, but they were none the worse for wear!

The next day we hit Arlington National Cemetary to see the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the Kennedy memorials.  After that we headed over to Alexandria, VA for a leisurely lunch of yummy crabcakes and for dessert - ice cream at Ben & Jerry's:

 

 

Ah, Yeah!  We capped the afternoon off with a boat cruise around Washington Harbor:

 

They totally dug it - you'll just have to trust me!

 

(that's a view of the Lincoln and Washington memorials from the boat)

The last day the family was in town, we hit the Natural history museum - another favorite as I think a lot of the bones at the museum made an appearance in the movie "Night at the Museum":

 

After the Natural History museum we hit the ESPN Zone, and finished the day with a long trip to the Spy museum (which if you haven't been is SO COOL!)  Whoo.  A long weekend of touring!  It's enough to make you a little crazy and all the excitement might have gotten to Hunts:

 

Come on kid - it's ok, you don't have to walk anymore - take the pillowcase off!  Sigh, well we all have different reactions to sight-seeing.  Hopefully the whole family has recovered and has some nice memories of DC!

View From My Perch

Since I'm at work more than any where else I thought I'd post a photo of my view at the office.  This is not my view all the time - most of the day my view is the computer screen and whatever documents I'm reviewing.  But this is the view from the terrace that leads off from my shared office.  It's a good place to make a quick phone call or grab some sunlight before returning to the salt mines:

 

I'm on the 9th floor and the terrace provides a good view in one direction of the Old Post Office building.  According to its web site the Old Post Office building was DC's first sky scraper and - as you can probably infer from the name - was built to house the Federal post office.  The top of the building provides a great view of downtown DC.

I took the photo because I thought the American flags waving at the base of the Old Post Office building looked really pretty - but my angle was not too good and it's a little dark and hard to see the foot of the building.  You can get a good view of the DC flag waving on the building across the street though!  I'll have to try this shot at another time of day.

I did manage to finish my latest embroidery WIP (that's work in progress for those of you who don't spend all day reading crafting blogs!) and I have some other stuff planned or in progress as we speak! (or rather as I type?)  I'll blog about that tomorrow - in the mean time, I hope everyone is enjoying the weekend!

Cherry Up!

This is a great time of year in DC.  The cherry blossoms are in bloom and it's gorgeous!

The weather in this area has been some what yucky the last few weeks.  So Monday when I was watching the news and the weather man said that the blossoms are in peak bloom and Tuesday would be sunny - I decided to go check out the trees.

 

It's pretty crazy down by the reflecting pool.  I forget every year how many people come to DC to see the cherry blossoms.  But it's also kind of great to realize that thousands of people come just to look at a beautiful bunch of trees.  And the trees make DC - which is already a pretty city - even prettier:

 

The blooms range from white to dark pink and every shade in between:

 

 

 

The tidal basin is surrounded by the cherry blossom trees and there is pink everywhere you look:

 

Most of the trees are at the tidal basin, but there are a few others around town that are equally pretty.  In Lafayette Park:

 

and at one of the entrances to the White House:

 

It was such a pretty day!  I really enjoy this time of year and hope you liked the photos!