This square completed Grandma’s Butterflies – my award-winning piece – done in honor of my grandmother. Before this I made four other squares that I did not include (seen in last week’s post). After the difficulties I faced with them I was ready to complete this project. To be honest, at this point I was feeling down about the whole project and had shed many tears over it. I could have used some advice from my grandmother on what I should do to bring this project to a close.  I could feel her telling me to have confidence in myself, that I would figure out how to finish this piece. Together we would figure out how to bring all the squares together with this last one. That is what I did, and I know she would have been proud of this square but more importantly proud that I entered a piece in the show. With her glasses pushed up to get a closer look, she would have examined how the cotton folds in on itself and creates the most interesting surface pattern. She would have touched it to feel the unique texture the cotton created. But most importantly she would have given me a big, nurturing hug and told me how proud she was of me. I may not have gotten that, but I know she would been honored by this work and would be left with a sense of accomplishment. Because without her, neither me nor my mother would be working in the fiber arts. Thank you, Grandma, for giving us that gift.

For this square I used the surface design technique of nuno cotton quilt felting along with adorning gems (resist technique) in the background. To add contrast in the piece I added pencil rovings to outline the blue butterflies and a darker blue alpaca/wool mix around the gems. The pencil roving outlines around the blue butterflies was pink to add a complimentary color that would pop on the square. The darker blue around the gems was in the same color family as the blue cotton quilting square butterflies. I ran out of the commercially mixed gray merino wool. Therefore, for this piece I had to hand card black and white wool to create the gray. It’s a little darker gray than the other pieces. It added a lot more time to the piece but all that’s important is that in the end it worked.

I had to spend a lot of time thinking about how to pull all these squares together with this piece. I choose light blue for the cotton quilting butterflies because it’s a complimentary color to the Pink Silk Butterflies. The Wings Flapping square also plays with the complimentary colors of pink and blue. In that square there is one pink butterfly with a blue embroidered pattern on the wings and a blue butterfly with a pink embroidered pattern on its wings. As I was thinking this square out, I wanted to continue to play with the complimentary colors of blue and pink. I also wanted to play with more surface alterations. In Pink Silk Butterflies I embroidered French knots with blue non superwash wool yarn to garnish the background of the square. In Darkened Butterflies I added sparkle to the background by entrapping sequins as an embellishment. Wings Flapping did not have any background added because all the detail work was done on the wings of the butterflies. But this square needed to continue the background accompaniments, so I turned to the surface design technique of adorned gems. More on that technique to come.

All the techniques used in Blue Cotton Butterflies were not as challenging to me as the three squares that came before it were. Or you could say the others were exceptionally challenging to me. I love working with cotton because it doesn’t shrink but the wool can easily get through it. It creates such fantastic surface texture, but you will not see it until you have completed the fulling process. Up to that point it will just look like a wet flat piece of textile on your wool. You see this in the pictures included.

I added the pencil rovings in part for design but also to help me lock in the shape of the butterflies and gems. I found it helpful as the wool was shrinking to have the pencil rovings there to control the shape. Like the other squares, using the same butterfly stencil I cut out the trio of blue butterflies from cotton quilting squares. Finding cotton quilting squares is easy because every fabric store has them unlike some of the other materials I had to find. But since I had issues with a few pieces before this one with the butterflies losing their shape, I thought the pencil rovings would serve as a method for me to control the formation. They did help with the control and I think added some emphasis around the two shapes – butterfly and circle with the gem adornment.

To start I laid out four layers of the hand carded mixed gray merino wool for the base and laid on top a trio of blue cotton cutout butterflies. The layout was the same as the other three squares to continue my metaphorical Andy Warhol photo-silkscreens. Then I outlined the trio of butterflies with pink pencil rovings. As I worked through the steps I needed to stop and reshape the butterflies if they moved, the pencil rovings did continue to do so, until the fulling was done. I found cotton much easier to work with than the Dupioni Silk which unlike cotton is impermeable. Since the wool can get through the cotton somewhat it helped secure the positioning as the fulling began unlike in Darkened Butterflies.

After the base was laid out and the butterflies with their pencil roving outline was added, I moved onto adorning with gems. To adorn gems, you just add the gem where you want then and then add two layers of wool on top of the gem. The gems take a lot of attention. You can’t really use any tool other than your hands to really agitate around the gem. Using a palm-board and rolling will miss getting down at the base of the gem. The gem acts as a resist. The wool cannot get through the gem but will create felt on top and around the gem. The gems can move around during the process so in addition to watching the pencil rovings I was also stopping to pay attention to the gems’ placement.

During the fulling process I was careful with the gems because I’ve shattered them before when throwing the project. I did not want to do that to this square. You want to cut a hole in the felt above the gems, but you want to keep it small to start. This is a tricky timing because you don’t want to cut them open too early and then they fall out but not too late because you want to smooth out the edges where you cut. I made sure after I cut the gems open to rub on some soap with my fingers around the freshly cut felt so that it would have a nice finish. I made sure when I was throwing the square that the gems where balled up in the middle to prevent them from shattering. I find the fulling step challenging with embedded beads, but they are pretty when the piece is done, and I thought they added a nice background to this simple piece.

I must be honest about this square, I was exhausted and ready to be done with this project. I loved doing this piece in honor of my grandmother, but I needed a break after it. The elections were over, thankfully they turned out as I hoped, and the piece was beautiful. I know my grandmother would have been delighted and honored by this piece. I think my interest in wet felting, although not her fiber art medium, would have really brought her joy. I was really devastated that she never was able to see the piece or even know that I was making it. But I did know her well enough to envision her reactions to the piece at the show. She would have been so proud and would have been pointing it out to all her friends. She would have snuck in some hidden touches of it, when others were not looking, since touching was not allowed at the gallery.

Grandma’s Butterflies was my way of processing her death and coming to terms with losing one of the most important people in my life. She and I were so close when I was very little. Even though later in life, as I formed my own identity, we were not as close, she always remained an important figure in my life. I’m sure many of you as a child felt the same way about your grandmother - everything she touched was perfect and magical. Although my squares were not perfect (nor should they be) I think they would have been magical to her.

Housekeeping

This is the last installment on the individual squares to my award-winning piece – Grandma’s Butterflies. They were released in the order they were created. If you missed the other installments you can still read them - Pink Silk Butterflies,Wings Flapping, and Darkened Butterflies. Although this is the last post on this entry to the show, I still have two more entries to tell you about. We now move on to the world of 3D design! I made two seamless bags using the resist technique. Next week’s post will be about my Pointy Flap Bag. That project involved many stages that took place over time. It started with creating the wool mix myself with a blending board and moving onto the formation of the bag and its strap creation.

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