A Glint of Gold

The Textile Arts LA "Year of Mindful Mending" with Ruth Katzenstein Souza had its final meeting last week. Ruth provided us with the golden opportunity of playing the Golden Joinery game.

From their website:

A tear in your favorite jeans? Your grandmothers silk blouse with a worn collar? They form the basis for the GOLDEN JOINERY game:
a fashion first aid
a game to wear
a treasure box
an adventurous journey
The game will be hosted by YOU. You will invite some friends, ask them to bring a dear but broken garment and together you will repair your clothes with gold. No experience needed with needle and thread, you will learn by doing.
The GOLDEN JOINERY game will offer techniques and playful interventions. The cards will guide you through the levels on the gameboard to get to the finish: your unique minicollection of garments with golden scars. They will be part of the ‘new’ fashion brand GOLDEN JOINERY, inmediately spread both online and offline.

I brought my grey Danish Schoolbag that I've had since the '80s, it had become worn at the bottom of a pocket -- so much so that I'd taped over the pocket opening with blue tape so I wouldn't accidentally put anything in there.
No before photo! Forgot, and we had to put our phones away!

Game material and tools included (from website):

manuals
gameboard
deck of 27 Cards
8 Round cards
set of needles
box of pins
4 Bobbins golden thread
threader
6 golden fabrics
leftovers
a tea bag

I was so grateful for the game supplies, because the golden "thread" that I brought was wretched to work with. Refusing to go purchase thread, I pulled apart some gold chord from my "Christmas Wrap" box. Each ply of the 2-ply chord consisted of 10 threads.

It was the most devilish stuff!
Threading a needle was a challenge (even with a needle threader!) and stitching with it even more so.

I also used some provided gold vinyl -- the tear was beyond mending with mere stitching.

Here's my mend in its current state:

I used two more types of thread: lovely golden metallic thread that came with the game and gold-color embroidery floss.

All the mends:

Ruth, thank you so much for our Year of Mindful Mending. It was a wonderful experience!

Linking up with

Patti's Visible Monday

Shelbee's Spread the Kindness

Catherine's #shareallLinkup

Summertime Goals: August Summery Summary

Daily Goals:
Do a Daily Drawing. (Fashion sketches count). 12/31

The fashion sketches are TOP SECRET
This, however, was a fun "Sunday Challenge" in my Facebook sketch group:
"Draw yourself as royalty in 3 minutes"
I used Procreate. [It took longer than 3 minutes!]

Procreate doodles (new) 19/31
This one got the most Likes:

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I messed up my “row of fashion sketches” so here’s today’s @procreate doodle. #digitalcanvas3 #patterndesign #annembray #100dayproject #findyour100 #procreate #100_amb 107/100. I’ve been posting the series on @annembray.art but maybe it belongs here. I confuse myself sometimes. Motif derived from my scarf.

A post shared by anne m bray (@annembray) on Jul 30, 2019 at 2:11pm PDT

This one I "donated" to the day job, I think it'll be good for Costco Canada panties if I change the colours:

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Today’s @procreate doodle. #digitalcanvas3 #patterndesign #annembray #100dayproject #findyour100 #procreate #100_amb 110/100. Motif derived from a bit on today’s tunic. Colorway from COTDstyle of the day: bold patterns and dirty sage! #COTDstyle

A post shared by anne m bray (@annembray) on Aug 2, 2019 at 1:12pm PDT

Weekly Goals:
Waterlogues from old road trip photos 19/4 / Post to Saatchi Art 4/4
Sew and/or repair at least one garment. 2/4

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Maiden voyage of my #memade tunic and new to me @Fluevog Moxie Magoo Magnums, captured on eBay. Woohoo! #vog_magnum #slowsewing #outfitjournal #outfitdiary #iwillwearwhatilike

A post shared by anne m bray (@annembray) on Aug 13, 2019 at 1:09pm PDT

List at least one item on Poshmark 4/4
Upload new art to Redbubble. 2/4
Sew one patch onto Crazy Quilt (new). 0/4 [sigh]

Summer Goals:
54 FASHION SKETCHES (new) 13/54 
Get taxes done. not yet
DeClutter the living room (again). started and needs more constant/consistent work
Get sewing machine repaired. (how many years has this been broken now?) not yet

Do you have any sort of "To Do" list? Or maybe a "Honey Do"?
I'll report back again at the end of the September, progress or not.

The SUMMER Link Party closes at 9/2, so get those summer things linked!

There will be a different sort of Link Party for September -- check back tomorrow!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Linking up with
Shelbee's Spread the Kindness
Catherine's #shareAllLinkup

Repair and Design Futures at the RISD Museum

Repair and Design Futures at the RISD Museum [ended 6/30/19] was a great show about mending.

A quilt display in Cafe Pearl

Repair is the creative destruction of brokenness.
—Elizabeth V. Spelman, Repair: The Impulse to Restore in a Fragile World

Repair, a humble act born of necessity, expresses resistance to the unmaking of our world and the environment. This exhibition and programming series, Repair and Design Futures, investigates mending as material intervention, metaphor, and call to action. Spanning the globe and more than three centuries, these objects reveal darns, patches, and stabilized areas that act as springboards to considering socially engaged design thinking today. Repair invites renewed forms of social exchange and offers alternative, holistic ways of facing environmental and social breakdown.

On display in this multiuse gallery space are costume and textile objects from the collections of the RISD Museum and Brown University’s Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology. In Café Pearl (at the Benefit Street entrance) and the Donghia Costume and Textile Gallery and Study Center (sixth floor), related exhibitions investigate additional approaches to repair. Through this informal, expansive format, we hope to encourage engagement across a broad spectrum of perspectives.

Kate Irvin
Curator, Costume and Textiles Department
RISD Museum
[all text in brown from RISD Museum website or exhibition checklist]

The exhibition was divided into several sections. There were also displays of relevant books, some of which I've listed at the bottom.

Wounds, Sutures, and Scars
We mend. We women turn things inside out and set things right.
—Louise Erdrich, Four Souls
The visceral presence of flesh in objects crafted of animal hide is amplified here by the visible sutures
that suggest a tending to and eventual healing of wounds endured. This material’s spiritual resonance
prompts questions of how the wound, crack, or fissure might provide an invitation to respond not only on a personal level but also within civic and collective arenas.

Repair as Value Added
Repairs that are not only unconcealed but celebrated serve as reminders of the rich life an object has
led, adding meaning, calling attention to its stories, and enabling a new path forward. Weathered
garments with evident and various repairs encourage us to appreciate the worn and imperfect as entry
points to understanding objects as material and practice, and to identifying holes (evident in patch
repairs) as important signs of history, time, emotional investment.

Ghanaian Man’s Robe (Fugu), mid 1900s Indigo-dyed cotton plain weave, patched
Museum purchase: Museum Works of Art Fund, by exchange 2017.5.2 

Textbook Repair
Well into the 20th century, mending and sewing skills were part of women’s education. Neatness and
precision were considered key indicators of skill and a girl’s eventual management of her household.
However, despite meticulous textbook instruction and training, many historical repairs combine
systematic skill with improvisation and creativity.

Broken-World Thinking
Broken-world thinking, as conceived by scholar Steven J. Jackson, presents breakage as potentially
generative and repair as a space for creative solutions to ruptures in the fabric of society. These pieces
speak to repair as a way of making something—perhaps even a broken world—functional again. These repairs acknowledge use, abuse, accident, and error. They insist on not forgetting the thing or its history.

Assemblage
These pieces reflect the value of assemblage in communicating and sharing mutual respect and
perspectives. Notions of cultural purity and ownership have no traction here. These items instead
recognize the emotional labor of dialogue and repairing relationships by reaching across imposed and/or imagined boundaries.

Patchwork
Patchworked items manifest repair by promoting collaboration. They celebrate the dialogue of the old with the new and illustrate the ways anyone can intervene and give dysfunctional material new life. The coming together involved in the practice of patchwork quilting has traditionally provided communities with moorings of exchange, communication, and shared traditions. Repair, in this case, is a way to reconnect fabric and people and engage with cultural and material history.

Additional reading:

• PDF checklist of exhibition
• Mending Matters: Stitch, Patch, and Repair Your Favorite Denim & More by Katrina Rodabaugh
• My Life with Things: The Consumer Diaries by Elizabeth Chin
• Fray: Art and Textile Politics by Julia Bryan-Wilson
• The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine by Rozsika Parker
• The Geometry of Hand-Sewing: A Romance in Stitches and Embroidery from Alabama Chanin and The School of Making by Natalie Chanin

Linking with

Shelbee's Spread the Kindness

Catherine's #shareallLinkup

Rose Shirt Rehab

I mended this last weekend, but haven't yet worked it into an outfit.
Maybe this week, maybe this combo.

[From last year. Still valid]

Or maybe for Fluevog Day (Wednesday, May 15) with The Fluevog Dress?
We shall see!

I got this from Suzanne Carillo's Etsy Shop, Vintage by Suzanne -- she posted it on Instagram or maybe her blog and I HAD to have it.
There were some fit issues.

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Flora and Fauna on my feet! More socks I didn't wear. COTD (colors of the day) Friday: FLORA AND FAUNA! #COTDstyle #cotdrewind #cotdthrowback Shirt from #vintagebysuzanne

A post shared by anne m bray (@annembray) on May 25, 2018 at 8:01pm PDT

[I had to check PayPal to find when I purchased this -- it was A YEAR AGO!]

The shirt has an unusual '90's sleeve, which you can't see at all because the print is so distracting, so I drew flats, front and back:

I could rip out the center back sleeve seam, remove a couple of pleats and make room for my shoulders. And that's what I did.

Here, everything is ripped out and ready to reconfigure. I used extra fabric from cutting off the cuffs for the patches.

I used a 1" thick piece of corrugated cardboard as my "voodoo" board.

Everything in position to sew, need to sandwich upper part of patch between the outside and inside collar stands.

Added another interior patch in the same location.

Done! Once I get my sewing machine repaired, I can add matching edge stitching at the base of the patch.

Whoa, that was a lot of detailed work!
Time to party!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Linking up with
Patti's Visible Monday
Shelbee's Spread the Kindness
Catherine's #ShareAllLinkup

Floral Mend

I had the notion to approach Mending Mountain with parameters.
Since May is Flower Link-up Month [see end of post], I pulled all the more-or-less floral patterned dresses out of the Dress Mend box (yes, I have them all categorized by garment):

Then did a photo shoot to determine whether any were even worth the effort.

Meh. It's uncomfortable. To Poshmark it goes.

I am obviously much happier in this number.
What you can't see is the broken zipper and the 12" gap at center back at my shoulders.
It needs major work. I'll do it, later.
[And this, my friends, is exactly the reason Mending Mountain exists].

This one has the strangest interior elastic cinching situation that took me a while to figure out.
On the fence -- it IS 100% cotton
May be good for one of Anita's Poolside Movie Nights. 

This one is really mid-calf length and too small and I hiked it up for the photo.
I have nostalgia for this, but is it worth rehabilitating?

This is a creation with issues. First of all, the neckline is too wide.
Second, too long!
Third, transparent!

Shorter definitely better.
Originally sewn for a 20's themed Movie Night from a silk sari.

Seriously. Where is my wand? Or my herd of sheep!
Just cutting a neck slit in this linen tablecloth is clearly not the answer!
Something more form-fitting would look much better.
Sometimes a rectangle is not the best solution.

No easy mends in this batch. Sigh. What am I going to do for my MeMadeMay pledge this week?

[that's my pledge]

Got florals?

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Linking this up with
Shelbee's Spread the Kindness
Catherine's #ShareAllLinkup