I have always been in love with fabric and textiles. My mother is an excellent seamstress with an eye for color and pattern, and when I was a very little girl she belonged to a "fabric of the month" club that sent out swatches of featured textiles.
I was enthralled with these few square inches of fabrics, and started learning about different kinds of fibers, weaves, decorative patterns and more.
It inspired a life long collection of textiles, particularly natural fibers. I love cotton, silk, linen and all the wonderful "new" fabrics that are available like bamboo, hemp, ramie, and others. And of course, you can just never have too many colors when it comes to fabric!
Seen above is some tie dyed cotton jersey and a selection of silk duponi that I have dyed, to be used in doll costuming. Two great sources for white fabrics in small amounts or by the bolt that are ready to be dyed are Dharma Trading Co. and ProChemical & Dye. They also sell dyes, supplies, and ready made clothing and other "blank" items in black or white to be dyed or painted. I love using fabric paints to embellish dyed fabric.
Click here to read about my painted face "bag ladies".
Going to a fabric store has always been my idea of fun that can last for hours. I like fabric stores so much that I built a miniature store using polymer clay, and my friends around the world helped me to stock it with little "bolts of fabric" also made of polymer clay!
Shown here are some 2"x 3" selections made by Nancy Osbahr. Click the link to see the slide show of ALL the wonderful bolts. There is a soundtrack, so make sure your speakers aren't on too high!
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In studying costume design and garment construction at Ohio State University, I learned even more about the history of textiles, dyeing and what people wear, and where, and when!
Its an interest I'm still learning about, and adding to my storehouse of techniques. I dye fabric yardage, laces and ribbons and readymade clothing every year and often use the results in my Spirit Doll kits.
Click here to see details from our Annual Dyeing Days event.
Click here to view a slide show with the cloth we've dyed.
I sell the Spirit Doll kits and also the parts that go into them, like my ceramic and polymer clay faces.
I also like to sew on a larger scale, and make life sized cloth dolls like Golde who is a 6 foot tall and lots of fun to costume, and her sister Kate, who stars in Shakespeare in the Schools productions with her fellow actor/author/director Nick Baldasare.
Belly dance and other performance costumes are particularly fun opportunities to do some beading and other decorative needle arts. So are wedding gowns and other ceremonial clothing. Embroidery is also something I learned to do early in my textile studies and I do love fringe! Dyeing, fabric painting, beading and other textile embellishments give me limitless choices. I love using Folkwear Patterns when I don't draft my own, and I often change things here or there. The dress shown at left is their Gibson Girl Blouse pattern made longer and with a deeper "V" to the yoke front.
These jackets at right are shown as a work in progress in the early 1980's, and had lots of vintage lace, colorful stitching, and of course some sequins and crystals. I still own my copy of American Denim and Native Funk and Flash, and found both books to be very inspiring, as are subscriptions to magazines like Threads. I love to find great textile art books at my local library too, as my husband frowns on me adding too many more book cases here. He says they have lots of shelves there! And he's right--you can find all sorts of textile inspirations at the library.
Costuming for dolls allow for lots of decorative options--the sky is usually the limit, but not always!
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Dyed textiles allow for the same freedom to play with color that comes with polymer clay, and the results go very well together.
Some times I dye fabrics specifically to go with certain things, but mostly I enjoy finding things that "go together" as I work on a project.
When you have enough stuff, you are bound to find the bits that co-ordinate!
There just isn't enough room to collect all the fabrics I'd like to have on hand, but I do have a tidy selection, as every quilter and costumer worth her pins must have!
And as I mentioned, I have a great many books about textiles and needle arts from around the world.
A favorite source of colorful "eye candy" is Textile Designs: Two Hundred Years of European and American Patterns Organized by Motif, Style, Color, Layout, and Period by Susan Meller and Joost Elffers. This is an amazing source of color and pattern for use in building polymer clay millefiore canes, or for illustrations. I checked it out from the library at first, but had to buy it for my own!
It also comes in CD form which allows the buyer to use the designs as digital files. This is more expensive, so it's on my wish list but would be worth every penny.
Another incredible source for those who love textile patterns and vintage ephemera is Twisted Papers, an online source where you will find unique, high resolution, full size and very affordable images to download and use in all your crafting and collecting projects. You can get them individually or on cd in collections. These get used here in our studio in all sorts of ways!
They have an amazing variety and you get the rights to use the images legally--that's an important plus.
Also a highly valued source for copyright free images for designers' use is the Dover Publications Pictorial Archive, which includes hundreds of books and cds of traditional fabric, textile and costume designs from around the world.
I use many of them to create rubber stamps that I use in decorating fabrics and paper as well as in texturing polymer, ceramic and metal clays.
