Fiber Art

We Sold Our House

| Annie

We sold our house! Again! And for the last time! We’ve closed and are now living in a hotel until we close on our new house in a couple of weeks. Our hotel has a bed AND a couch, and feels super luxurious after spending months on an air mattress and the floor.

I was surprised how emotional we were when we finally left the house for good. We absolutely wanted to move, but, as Mike pointed out, we lived in that house longer than either of us had lived anywhere else in our lives. That’s not nothing.

I have been doing a lot of crocheting as I waited for our house to go from “Under Contract” to “Closed.” I finished two of the thread crochet pieces I showed you in my last post (well, almost finished—they are not attached to the canvas as well as I would like because all of our staple guns are in storage). This one is Texture Study: Bumpy:

Texture Study: Bumpy | Annie Webster | Webster Fiber Arts

And this one is Texture Study: Shaggy:

Texture Study: Shaggy | Annie Webster | Webster Fiber Arts

I’ve also been playing around with some freeform-thread-jewelry things, but that is a post for another day.

Until next time,
Annie

Working with Floss

| Annie

Everything has fallen apart with our home buying and selling. Our buyers lost their financing, so we are back on the market. Mike and I left town for the weekend and lots of people looked at the house while we took in three different zoos in three different states in three days! It was fun. We saw a ton of animals and I even got pooped on by a bird—what more could you ask for?

I am starting to go a little bonkers not having all of my supplies available to me. I have started making a lot of small things with crochet thread and embroidery floss, which is not something I thought I would ever do. It just seems so little and tedious, but I am actually having a good time with it. Here’s a photo of the freeform piece I am working on right now with some pearl cotton:

Freeform Pearl Cotton Work In Progress | Annie Webster | Webster Fiber Arts

I tried starting with a frame on this one and working in to the center with this piece, instead of making the scrumbles first then building out. I think the later method works better for me—you can see my perfect 5″ x 5″ square is becoming misshapen as I work. It will all work out in the end, which is something I have been saying a lot lately, not just about crochet, but about life in general.

Until next time,
Annie

Some Bright Scrumbles

| Annie

It looks like we’re going to be in our empty house for at least another week. Since all of my dyeing supplies are packed away deep in a storage space, I went to JoAnn to get some new yarns to play with while I am waiting to move.

I’ve been doing so much work with the subtle golds, yellows, greens, and browns of natural dyes lately that I decided to go in the opposite direction when I picked out my yarns. I went for a bold and bright rainbow. I’ve been making scrumbles with my yarn, little freeform bits that will eventually be stitched together into…something:

Some Bright Scrumbles | Annie Webster | Webster Fiber Arts

I’m having a good time playing with these guys while I watch TV on the laptop, but I am ready to have a real place to sit while I work and, more importantly, better lighting (I don’t know why I let the movers take my work lamp).

Until next time,
Annie

The Nature of Fiber Exhibit

| Annie

Hello there, fiber folks! How’s it going? Mike and I are camping out in our house at the moment. We are in the midst of doing some house selling and some house buying, but we are hung up waiting on some paperwork. All of our stuff is in storage, but we have clothes and camp chairs and an air mattress. I don’t know when we will actually get to move, but soon, I hope. Soon.

I have been crocheting away while sitting in my camp chair and watching game shows from the 1970s on the laptop. One of the pieces I finished before we started all of this packing and moving business is on display at the Anita B. Gorman Conservation Discovery Center right now. Our group of Kansas City Fiber Artists is putting on “The Nature of Fiber,” a collection of works relating to fiber and nature. I saw a few of the pieces when I dropped off my work and it is a cool exhibit!

I used yarns I dyed with marigolds in the fall to create my piece. This is one is called “Marigold Merriment:”

Marigold Merriment | Annie Webster | Webster Fiber Arts

You can see my piece and the work of 14 other artists through January and February:

Gorman Discovery Center
4750 Troost Ave
Kansas City, MO 64110
Monday through Friday, 8 AM – 5 PM
Open until 7 PM on the 1st and 3rd Tuesday of the month
Open 1st and 3rd Saturday of the month, 9 AM – 4 PM

On January 16th, there will be a Meet the Artists event from 6 PM – 7 PM at the Center. I’d love for you to stop by, see the show, and chat with all of us. Yay!

Until next time,
Annie

All of the Happenings

| Annie

Hello, neglected blog readers!

There is so very much happening right now and I have so very little interest in stopping to write about it. We have put our house on the market, and have done a ton of packing over the past couple of months (we are tchotchke people and have many of them—they are all now packed away and our house looks like grownups live there). Our house is being looked at right now, and I am at a very cold Panera while they do the showing. It is an exciting, nerve-racking time.

In my last post, I wrote about the Fiber Squared exhibit. One of my pieces, I Live in a Granny Square World, received an Honorable Mention! Woo-hoo!! Here’s a photo of the winners, taken by Missouri Fiber Artists member Jane Olson Glidden‎.

Fiber Squared - MoFA 2017 photo by Jane Olson Glidden | Webster Fiber Arts

Clearly I did not get the subdued, earth tones memo.

And now we are going to travel even further back in my blogging history to September of 2015, when I wrote about the Mandalas for Marinke project. This month, the Mandalas for Marinke book was released, and the first exhibit, Healing Circles: Mandalas for Marinke, opened in Long Beach, CA. Again, Woo-hoo!!

#MandalasforMarinke Project Contribution | Webster Fiber Arts

I have the book and it is big and full of photos of crocheted mandalas and quotes from folks all over the world about dealing with depression. Kathryn at Crochet Concupiscence has done so much good (and, I am sure, hard) work for this project. Mandalas for Marinke is available at Amazon, and would make a lovely Christmas gift.

If you’d like to see photos from the Healing Circles: Mandalas for Marinke exhibit, check out the Threadwinners Instagram feed. I’ve been able to pick my mandala out in a couple of the photos, which is just super cool.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Until next time,
Annie

Fiber Squared Exhibit

| Annie

Hi folks,

I have three pieces in a show opening tomorrow in St. Charles, MO. Yay!

The show is called Fiber Squared and it features 12″ by 12″ pieces by Missouri Fiber Artists members. I have really come to enjoy making these square pieces. My pieces include I Live in a Granny Square World:

I Live in a Granny Square World | Annie Webster | Webster Fiber Arts

Mammatus:

Mammatus | Annie Webster | Webster Fiber Arts

and This Old Thing?:

This Old Thing? | Annie Webster | Webster Fiber Arts

The show is at The Foundry Arts Centre in the Ameristar Gallery and runs October 6 through December 1, 2017. Here are the details:

Fiber Squared
The Foundry Arts Centre
Ameristar Gallery
520 N Main Center
St. Charles, MO 63301
636-255-0270

Hours:
Monday: Closed
Tuesday-Thursday: 10A – 8P
Friday-Saturday: 10A – 5P
Sunday: 12P – 4P

Fiber Squared is running at the same time as Quilt National 2017, a internationally-juried exhibit of art quilts by contemporary fiber artists. So much fiber in one place! Yay!

Fiber Squared - Missouri Fiber Artists | Webster Fiber Arts

Until next time,
Annie

I Live in a Granny Square World

| Annie

Hi folks,

I hope your August is going well. It has been unusually cool in Kansas City so far this month and we have had our windows open and the attic fan going. All of that fresh air has had me in cleaning mood, so I have been organizing my art supplies, cleaning out closets and tubs, and finding all sorts of fun stuff.

One of the things I found was a couple of packages of Lion Brand Bonbons. I got these little skeins of cotton yarn a looooong time ago thinking I would do some sort of embroidery with them, but now crochet seemed like the way to go. I started making tiny granny squares without a plan beyond making a bunch of tiny granny squares in a bunch of fun colors.

Before long, I was surrounded by 1 inch squares. I decided to group the natural colored squares together as the background for a little sketchy self-portrait I created by couching black cotton yarn on top of the joined squares. Then, I added all of the color.

The finished piece is attached to a 12″ x 12″ canvas (I found a lot of those while I was cleaning, too). Here is I Live in a Granny Square World:

I Live in a Granny Square World | Webster Fiber Arts

Until next time,
Annie

Honorably Mentioned

| Annie

You guys!

I was mentioned! With honor! My Crunchy Granola Baby Blanket received honorable mention in the Home Décor & Afghans category of the annual Crochet Guild of America Design Competition. Yay!

Crunchy Granola Baby Blanket | Webster Fiber Arts

I created this blanket as a way to showcase my plant dyed yarns. In this piece there are fibers I dyed with blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, tea, dandelions, and the leaves of violets.

Crunchy Granola Baby Blanket Detail | Webster Fiber Arts

I chose to crochet hexagons with my yarn because I love them. I toyed with doing some half-hexie shapes to make the edges even, but I liked the ragged edge when I put it together, so it stayed that way. I went with a baby blanket size because that’s the amount of yarn I had (some decisions are easy to make).

Until next time,
Annie

WIP: The Rainbow Thing

| Annie

Hi Folks,

I have several pieces I am working on right now, and several more that need to be photographed. Today, I am working on this one:

WIP: The Rainbow Thing | Webster Fiber Arts

This one doesn’t have a real name at this point, so I’m just referring to it as “The Rainbow Thing.” I have been working on this piece on and off for a few months, but this week, I started piecing all of those colorful blobs together.

The yarn in this piece is all scraps from other projects, or yarn from projects that never really got off the ground. It is a mix of acrylic and wool, cheap and pricey, hand dyed and commercial dyed, smooth and novelty, and tiny bits and longer strands.

I am now in the process of filling in the holes where my randomly created blobs (they are called “scrumbles” in the freeform crochet world) don’t line up perfectly. I filled in between the orange and yellow sections and the yellow and green yesterday and this morning.

Once I get all of the holes filled, I’ll begin squaring off the edges. When finished, this freeform piece will be mounted on a 24″ x 36″ felt covered canvas for hanging.

I’m pretty in love with this rainbow thing!

Until next time,
Annie