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.
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.
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.
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.
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.