Tufting My Heart Out

Back in July, when things were slowing down for the summer, I finally invested in something I’ve been wanting to try for years: tufting. My current body of fiber art keeps getting bigger in size & more and more textured. Plus, my background in commercial interior design has given me a major soft spot for textiles and carpet, so all of that seemed like the perfect combination of reasons to try out this new technique. However, by the time my tufting guns, frame, and materials arrived in early August, I was neck deep in commissions and fall season craft show prep. The box sat unopened in my studio until the week of Christmas, when I finally came up for air.

If you’re not familiar with tufting, it’s kind of like a sewing machine gun for making rugs (or art, or home decor, or whatever you can imagine). Yarn is threaded through the gun, and it pushes the yarn through the foundation fabric. A loop gun gets you tight loops, like you might see in commercial carpet. A “cut” gun gets you cut pile, which is what you probably have in your home (plush yarn fibers sticking straight up from the floor).

Learning something new is very exciting for me, and it’s so tricky to make time for these things, but it’s always worth it. I just recently got to try out my new glorious tools and it was worth the 6 month delay! I took an online training course last week and got started experimenting with the different guns and yarn options right away. Definitely a major learning curve coming from doing every little stitch by hand to a piece of machinery like this, but after a few practice pieces I finally got the hang of things. The gun is almost too fast, compared to what I’m used to, but one of the big reasons I wanted to try it was to be able to speed things up a little with my work. I’m not rushing things, I just dream BIG!

I have really enjoyed playing around with different yarn so far. Of course I started out only using the yarn that the instructor advised, but then once you learn the rules, you’re free to break them, right? Some yarn, like thick rug yarn i use for punch needle projects, works fine but only as a single ply. Thinner yarn, like the nylon I received as a donation from Milliken Floors earlier this year, works well as a 2 or 3 ply.

I LOVE all the possible textures you can achieve with different yarn types, plus changing between the loop and the cut pile guns. I haven’t worked up the nerve to adjust the loop and pile heights yet, but believe me, it’s on my list of things to try once I get comfy with the basics. Until then, I’m here tufting my heart out and enjoying learning something new. Where has this been all my life!?

Learning Shibori Dying

Getting my hands dirty is something I look forward to. Dying my hands blue….well, that was new for me until recently. I took a Shibori dying class this weekend, and as always, learning something new and unrelated to anything else I’m involved with, tends to inspire me in unexpected ways. Not only did I learn about the historical significance of indigo, but also practical information about working with natural dyes. I can admit this now, after the fact, that I didn’t realize indigo was a plant. I guess I always assumed it was a mineral or chemical compound, but it’s actually a crop, one that’s making a major comeback on American farms. Who knew! Well, you might have known, but I certainly didn’t.

The class was organized by The Maker’s Collective, taught by Catherine Cross of the Summer Blues Indigo Dying Workshop, and hosted at Knack here in Greenville, SC. Our group spent the first hour watching demonstrations of different techniques, learning an overview of Shibori dying, followed by two hours of our own hands-on experiments. We used clothespins, rubber bands, clamped plywood, and lots of other random stuff to resist the dye in certain areas, creating all sorts of interesting and unpredictable patterns on test fabric, and eventually “real” stuff like clothing. I brought some white leather scraps from my studio, just to see if it would work, and was thrilled with the results. It was such a blast!

A few of my finished pieces

Some of my pieces turned out beautifully, but most did not. I couldn’t get the dye to do exactly what I wanted, but it’s nice to give up control sometimes. Here’s why my so called failures are actually good for the health of my creativity:

I need freedom to fail sometimes. I need freedom of process, to experiment with new mediums that may or may not complement the work I do for my handmade business Once Again Sam. My average day is filled with production, making finished items to fulfill orders, all of which have to look a certain way. My business is booming, which is exciting, but I don’t often have time to just dabble and screw around in the studio like I used to. I have to be diligent with my time and make make make, otherwise by business might fail.

The thing is, my business won’t fail just because I took a few hours one Saturday afternoon to go learn something cool like Shibori dying rather than working on orders. It’s healthy to get out once in awhile and try something new, just for fun, just to keep my creative juices flowing. Experimenting with different mediums is how my business started, and I have to step back and remember that, and choose to pursue more of it, because it will help me grow. Afterall, I’m a maker (who currently has blue hands), not a factory.