Spring Award Ribbons, Tempe Festival of the Arts

The ribbons got finished, delivered, and (by the accounts I’ve heard) the winning artists were happy!

For Spring 2024, the TFA and I did our usual riffing off the Featured Artist’s work.

This time, the Festival showcased the work of a family of extraordinary weavers: Mel Mendez, whose family has been weaving for a century or two, and their skill shows in every piece of weaving.

I am a crappy weaver, though I want to get better at it. Certainly, my meager skills would not do Mendez justice!

But I am fairly good at applique, and I have a *lot* of fabric that fell into the colorways and patterns to (sort of) mimic the ‘look’ of tapestries from Mel Mendez and his family looms.

I had a vague sketch: dark purple or brown linen ground. Edgings in a moody, rich multicolor stripe. Central panels in a woven stripe picking up orange, blue, green, terracotta, black, and white patterns.

Sketch for Spring 2024 award ribbons for the Tempe Festival of the Arts. Dark purple linen ground, striped cotton edging, and orange and green striped center fabric are accented by beadwoven medallions and smoky-looking thread tassels.

I used scans of many actual fabrics in the digital sketch. Most of those fabrics were from Goodwill, and started life as napkins, placemats, and tablerunners or tablecloths.

Hint: those used items are a great way to get smaller pieces of richly pattern-woven fabric very cheaply. They make wonderful accents and edging materials.

I wanted a central motif of woven beadwork, with a multicolor tassel hanging down. Two estate stashes in 2019 gave me 3x3x3mm square glass beads in various colors.

The large 5x20 inch ribbons: Tempe Festival gallery ribbon, Best Booth Display, and Best In Show.

My habit of collecting thrift store embroidery floss paid off *again* with multicolor tassels in gray, white, icy pastels, olives, reds, and black. They look like smoke from a fire. They are accented by handpainted Peruvian ceramic beads, plus glass bead accents.

Three of the smaller 4x16 inch ribbons.

I was stumped by the base fabric for the gel transfer labels. Until I remembered a pale pink, blue, and brown cotton shirting fabric. All those tiny stripes played off the stripe motif of these ribbons. The light color value makes darker print stand out.

Lastly, I scattered flat rectangular black-lip shell sequins over the ribbons down a center axis.

Some of the smallest 3x9 inch ribbons, in this case the 'Young Artist' categories.

I am very happy with these. As always, I learned some new tricks with this set.

There are 26 ribbons in total; I have not shown all of them here.