Tag: textile art

the vacation sewing box, mini stitched mushrooms, and the finished 2023 stitch book

August 16, 2023

by annwood

a box filled with hand stitch projects prepared- it's pretty messy

meditative stitching

Simple hand stitching is an ideal activity for percolating ideas. It occupies me but doesn’t require too much brain power and lets my subconscious do its background magic. That background magic is key to everything and there is a lot to percolate! I’m working on new projects to share here and getting ready to head to Squam to teach a workshop all about having ideas…

This box of stitch projects is built for that, a vacation from thinking. Decisions are already made and you can just pull something out and start sewing. My box is lots of mending and mini mushrooms.

I made the spotted guy from the cut off part of some recently hemmed pants. The soft cotton twill was splattered with bleach first. Now I’ve got a mushroom that matches my pants and I’m positive that’s going to come in handy someday.

finishing the 100 day stitch book

It’s finally assembled! Two big differences for me this year are leaving the edges raw and thinking of the pages in pairs. I loved having a second chance at compositions by treating 2 pages as one image/idea. And I mostly did not work on them consecutively. Especially when I wasn’t 100% happy with what I’d done, putting the idea aside for a bit helped a lot. Checkout the final assembly of the finished pages in the video below.

learn more about the stitch book project here

Don’t see the video? Click here.

plus the mr. socks photo challenge winner!

Congratulations Diane! (@lubydiane on instagram). I love that your mr. socks had a friend on his adventures and all the photos were fantastic. A bundle of scraps will be headed your way! Check out the full reel on instagram. So sweet!

Let’s wind up the summer with another photo challenge

Show us your mushrooms! Are they poisonous? Enchanted? Do they magically appear only when the moon is full? Stitch up a mushroom and take a photo. Please use #annwoodmushroompattern to share on instagram or facebook. Post your photo before the end of September. A panel of esteemed judges (me) will chose the winner of an awesome little bundle of scraps in early September.

Do you have a travel sewing project? Are you ready for September?!
Are you an over-achiever already working on holiday stuff? Let us know in the comments.

the dastardly owl sewing pattern is in the shop

December 9, 2018

by annwood

Make this owl. This imperious and condescending owl. He measures 9 inches tall from disgruntled talon to sinister horn. And the pattern scales well if you would like to try a larger owl.

The PDF pattern download is 31 pages long and has more than 130 color photos. You’ll learn how to construct the basic body shape and talons as well as my system for creating owl-ish layers of feathers and a dastardly expression. Every element is broken down into steps and fully explained.

The pattern has all the top secret tricks I’ve come up with over 12 years of making ill tempered owls. And I’ll share this one with you here:

When the layers are fully assembled spritz with water or spray starch if you like.

And run a hot iron over the feathers. I do it to his face too (so rude) to adjust his dastardly expression. It has a magic effect, un-ruffling the feathers and giving the layers extra owly-ness.

I’m so excited to share this pattern with you! I’m so glad it’s done! I can’t believe how much work it was!And I hope you make owls!

Do you get my free weekly-ish newsletter? There are tips and tricks, ideas, stuff to try, all the latest news and blogposts and extra stuff, just for subscribers, delivered mostly on Friday. Pretty much.

amulets and toadstools on my work table

August 31, 2018

by annwood

fabric amulets and mushrooms on my work table

Labor Day Weekend, the unofficial start of the holiday season. Just kidding. Mostly. It does have a shifting feel to it though, everything starting back up again. It’s going to be a sewing weekend for me. Fun sewing, amulets and mushrooms and Monday devoted entirely to experimenting. I’ll give you the full report on that next week.

I’m still having a good time making amulets, small thoughts, and they are generating all sorts of color and composition ideas for larger or more involved things. They have become morning work for me, hand sewing with coffee before I’m quite awake yet. I love having a little stack ready to go and waiting for me.

Do you pick up handwork first thing? What are you making? Can you give yourself a day or an hour or 20 minutes to play and experiment this weekend?

These are the things I want to know.

dastardly owl laboratory and the silly bug club

August 24, 2018

by annwood

Update : find the owl sewing pattern here

The bodies are piling up as the owl shape is getting fine tuned. I’m preparing for owl workshops (PS – 2 spots have opened up in the 10/20-21 class) and ultimately a print and pdf owl pattern so every detail and dastardly proportion is being examined. I’ve started with the body shape. There are two construction methods I use for making owls, I created two patterns that produce slightly different shapes, one more rubenesque and another more sculptural and a bit more realistic. I might be the only one who can tell the difference. I tried to choose one to work on but ended up with a hybrid.

The next step is to test and revise again and again until only what is essential is left, the shape is expressive, the pattern pieces assemble perfectly and any fussiness is removed. After each prototype I adjust and resew and if the adjustment is successful it is further refined in Adobe Illustrator.

I arrived at the body shape that feels just right yesterday. And the body pattern pieces feel good too, it snaps together like nobody’s business. Even with difficult fabric like this odd tweedy stuff from mrs. brown’s skirt. I’ve been making things from that turn of the century skirt for 8 years and I’m sorry it’s is almost gone now. It has made lots of wonderful owls and rats and spiders but the weave is loose, thick, ravely and a little slippery, super hard to sew.

I’m ready to move on to the feathers, feet and features. As I finish my little pile of owly bodies I’ll experiment with those details until each is transformed into a teachable technique and or pattern piece that produces reliable results.

And the silly bug club! Thanks so much to everybody who showed up for the challenge. I drew a name from a hat and the winner of the mosquito rag doll is @bonniecapaulgallery ! I’ll message you on instagram for address etc. I hope you keep making and posting silly bugs, this was fun and I’ll offer you another challenge soon. Have a beautiful weekend and I’ll leave you with a few highlights from the posts and you can check out all the silly bugs here.

woodshedding birds and owls

April 20, 2018

by annwood

I’m in the woodshed with songbirds. Evaluating the pattern and steps, testing and adjusting little things – using what I learned teaching the workshops last month to make the pattern all I want it to be.

My friend Mickey introduced me to the term woodshedding and I love it:

“The ability to conjure up a feeling of wonder in others, to create a sense of awe, has always fascinated me. And while I do believe that magic can just “happen” under the right circumstances, creating magic is a much different story. It involves a lot of hard work, endless study and a constant refining of process and craft. In music, they call these periods of intense practice woodshedding, referring to the time spent honing skills privately out in the woodshed.”

Mick Riad – Creative Director, Fortuny

I think it is my favorite place to be, in the woodshed with something. Discovering, testing and refining. Deep in a learning process.

I’m also woodshedding owls to prepare for ~~the dastardly owl workshops this fall (I think there are 2 spots left).~~

What’s going on in your woodshed?

Update – the songbird and owl patterns are available in the shop now:

mending, tiny pants, a blue owl, and other travel sewing

August 18, 2017

by annwood

Another thing to love about small sewing, hand sewing, is how well it travels. I’m packing up some projects today and heading out to water and forests and people who have forgotten what I look like.

Find the owl sewing pattern here

This blue owl is coming. His indigo wings are all pinned up and ready for stitching. I love the blues, the variety, layered together Boro style. There is also some small blue appliqué work – I’m experimenting with eyes. More on that soon.

I’m bringing lot’s of mending too. The seats of my pants mostly. I’ve been wandering around lately with extra and unseemly ventilation.

And I’m spending some time with Joseph Cornell’s boxes and thinking about how things, objects, relate to each other, the moods and atmosphere and ideas those relationships can create and the poetry of things. They are ideas important to upcoming workshops.

And I want to sit by the water and make tiny trousers. Tiny trousers for little lamb gentlemen.

I find the little pants particularly satisfying – they are quick and there is just something about tiny pants.

I want to come home with a little pile of satchels and pants.

natural history : a new workshop

May 16, 2017

by annwood

natural history : a workshop with ann wood

* Update – The workshop has sold out but please add your name to the wait list if you were hoping to join – cancellations do happen.

~~Registration just opened~~ for “Natural History” a three day creative retreat with The Makerie in Boulder – September 22nd to the 24th.

Our assignment for our three days together is to create and document an imagined natural history. We will look for inspiration at the intersection of history, poetry and nature, working collaboratively as well as individually to create and photograph a collection of specimens. We’ll use textiles, paper, found objects and a variety of other tools, techniques, materials and inspiration I’m bringing.

I’ll guide you through improvisational (and fun) exercises designed to spark you creatively, help you dig deeply into your imagination and generates ideas. It’s a spontaneous, “yes and” way of working – each action builds on the previous – you work with what shows up. It’s less about finished works and more about making connections and recognizing serendipity and happy accidents when they appear. We will pull ideas and details from our experiments as a starting point for designing and making our plants and creatures.

On our last day together we will style and photograph our specimens individually and as a group. I’ll share tips for creating compelling compositions and moods, simple lighting hacks and other seat of the pants techniques that I use in photographing my own work.

This is a workshop about experimenting, collaborating, playing and getting out of your own way. That is a life long daily challenge for me and I love sharing what I’ve learned so far. I hope I can help you be a more intrepid explorer of your imagination, reach past the territory you’ve already navigated and expand your skills for sharing that world.

Sounds like fun to me and I hope to see you there! If you’ve got questions please send me a message – I’m happy to help.

*registration has closed but you can still join the wait list here.

bats and perseverance

March 23, 2017

by annwood

I have been bothered by bats for a very long time. They were one of my first stitched creatures. I love them but vowed to never make another. The process was brutal on my hands and had a high late stage failure rate. And they took an outrageous amount of time. But I love them, I love their shape, their curves and the way that shape seems to change as they twirl in the breeze and the lovely shadows they cast.

So lately I started from scratch – a whole new method of constructing them. There have been several dismal failures but in the past week I’ve landed on something good -. It’s much easier hand-wise and the result is reliable and consistent. It still takes forever. Not as bad as the original bats but still problematic. I’m not sure I can get to a place where I can produce them with any efficiency but I’m not done trying.

botanical experiments and 11 years of blogging

March 23, 2017

by annwood

A blog anniversary snuck past in February – 11 years. When I did remember I thought maybe I didn’t really have anything to say about it. But the comments about the machine on last week’s post changed my mind. I remembered what a part of everything the machine has been. I remembered the serendipity, the sweetness and steadiness of it’s presence in my life and work.

It has been with me for all of it. My mother’s machine. I have sewn on it my entire life. So I want to mark this anniversary with an entirely true and slightly spooky story about it. It happened in the very beginning of this blog – 11 years ago:

In December of 2006 I had just begun my solo enterprise – I had lots of orders and deadlines and on the eve of one of those very important deadlines I was still sewing furiously very late at night. With a long way still to go the machine suddenly stopped and a chunk of metal rocketed past my face. I found it across the room – an essential part of the machine – no sewing without it – and it was broken. I tried to fix it but nothing worked. I have a drawer full of bits and pieces that I saved from my Father’s workshop – bits of metal and rubber, knobs, washers, gears, springs etc. I thought maybe I could cobble some temporary solution together from those. Another hour of frustration and no luck at all. Exhausted, defeated and ready to give up I pushed the drawer closed and it stuck halfway, I pushed again and it stuck again, I pulled and it stuck. I gave a great big angry pull and the drawer flew out and what had caused it to stick also flew out and landed – right in my lap. To my amazement and disbelief it was a replacement for the broken sewing machine part – the exact part – identical but for the color. Not similar, not “good enough” the EXACT PART in perfect condition. I snapped it in and it worked beautifully, that night and all the nights and days that have followed.

The End.

And – a little bit of what I’m working on today. New botanical experiments. I think the one above will be a pink cloaked bishop lily and below a seedpod experiment – playing with the idea of honeycomb texture. I’ve got plans for more and I’ll show you next week. I’m also planning on a shop update ~~next week~~ (postponed for a bit) with botanicals and some creatures. You can sign up here to be notified by email when new items are available.

color stories : yellow and pink

January 26, 2017

by annwood

Find the sewing pattern to make this songbird here.

My favorite textiles have been the ones that find me. They bring colors I could not imagine. These 18th century pieces (a beautiful gift) are mesmerizing and expanded my understanding of what yellow and pink can be.

This is yellow that sounds like trumpets, bright, triumphant trumpets and pink and crimson that sound like weeping violins.

“if a violin string could ache, i would be that string.” ― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

I’m making songbirds and trying hard to do the colors and textures justice- they have waited such a long time.

Do you get my free weekly-ish newsletter? There are tips and tricks, ideas, stuff to try, all the latest news and blogposts and extra stuff, just for subscribers, delivered mostly on Friday. Pretty much.

ant world part 2 : a merry christmas

December 21, 2016

by annwood

The Beaumonts are ready for the holidays (if you have not yet met fifth avenue’s most stylish anthropods you can learn more here).

Tiny Fortuny stockings are hung, presents are wrapped, cookies baked, hearth blazing and the whole family is trimming the tree – such festive ants.

Merry Christmas!

turnips, mosquitos and the big bad wolf

November 3, 2016

by annwood

* shop announcement the new things below and some suprises are in the shop now – Friday 11/4

A heroic root vegetable – the majestic turnip. I love making these – rutabagas and turnips – the stitching is meandering and meditative and I like experimenting with textures and layering. I have found that antique table linens are ideal for making the shape – the cotton is thick and there is a little sheen. I layer sheer cottons – often pieces of antique kimonos and lots of stitching to add color and more texture including the rough edge where the leaves were chopped off. That’s my favorite part.

PS – I’m teaching a class on this very subject in the spring in NYC – at the Sweet Paul Makerie.

And do you remember the wolf? He is among a little group of things started over the summer that finally got finished and photographed this week.

He doesn’t look so bad…. He looks sort of pleasant.

But do not trust him – there is a dark side.

And he is only one of the problems a tiny rag doll can run into around here. I finished 5 new mosquitos too – 2 are going on special missions but the other three Edwardian girls will be in the shop tomorrow. Please meet the ladies: