Taking the Plunge

In August of 2018 at the age of 94, my grandmother passed away taking with her all the knowledge of fiber art techniques she learned. She did teach many students at her workshops and she taught her daughters some techniques. But today I would give anything to have a collection of video clips of her teaching the techniques she mastered. I have no children (the dog doesn’t count for this) so I’m going to document my journey for others to follow. Maybe someday another fiber student will be trying to figure out a technique and they will search the web and find my blog post on it.  They may not be my child, but I will have preserved the technique and transferred the learnings to the next line of fiberists.

So, today I’m plunging into the pool with other fiber arts bloggers! Follow me through my exploration of wet & nuno felting, 3D vessels and bags, wall hangings, hats and more fiber techniques. I will be talking about my grandmother, my inspiration, throughout this blog. I will be taking up my place in line as a part of the legacy of women who mastered the craft of textiles. Each generation of women in my family passed on their knowledge of fiber arts to their daughters and now it is my turn.

How I pass on my legacy will be in my own unique way. I’m learning a craft started during the bronze age at the same time teaching myself how to use the modern digital world to share my work. My mother suggested to me when I started felting to keep a journal to document my work. That way I could go back and remember how things worked and didn’t work. I did start that, but I didn’t keep it going for too long. Mainly because I am working with water and soap and wet and soapy are not conducive to journaling in a paper notebook. Plus, for me to really understand what was happening with the wool as I worked through the process, I found photographing each stage worked better. Then I could go back and analyze it and write about it. I thought to myself the best way to utilize these photos would be to have a blog to document and write about the experience.

My grandmother was taught the craft of knitting and spinning by her grandmother, she talks about it in an article of the Orchard Park Bee (more of that to come in my next post). My grandmother tried to pass these skills to her daughters but with both of her daughters busy, working and raising their families, they were not able to spend the time developing these techniques. My mother took up weaving and spinning when she retired and by then my grandmother was in a nursing home. For my mother, bringing samples of her weaving and spinning to my grandmother when she visited helped her feel closer to her mother. She may not have been able to communicate well with us at the end, but she loved to touch and feel the work we brought her. She always had a big smile.

The Weavers Guild of Buffalo was turning fifty in 2019 and they decided to put on a juried show called The Golden Web. Both my grandmother and mother belonged to the guild, so it made sense for me to participate. I made my final project for a surface design class an exhibit for the show. My piece was inspired by my grandmother and I dedicated it to her at the show. Her wall hanging of a butterfly wing woven using the Moorman technique hangs in my studio. That was the piece that inspired Grandma’s Butterflies and using various wet and nuno felting techniques I shaped the form of butterflies. Other blog postings will go into that piece in much greater detail but for this post I want my followers to understand what pushed me to plunge into the blogosphere.

How I Started Felting

For the past 12 years I have lived far away from my family. My mother tries to visit me or meet-up with me on trips so we can see each other more than just the holidays. Two years ago, she asked me to go with her to the Eastern Great Lakes Fiber Conference (EGLFC). In retirement my grandmother traveled to fiber arts conferences across the country and in Canada where she learned techniques, entered projects into juried exhibits, and met with fiber vendors. But my exploration is not starting in retirement. When my mother asked me to go to the conference it was post the 2016 election and I was searching for my next leadership position in Washington, DC, I had the time and I wanted to spend time with my mom, so I said yes. It wasn’t the best election year for me (and many others) so some time away from DC was more than welcome in my book.

So, I drove to Canandaigua Lake in New York to meet up with my mom at the conference. We were staying together in a dorm which made the trip even more exciting. It was like going to camp again but this time with my mom and a bunch of fiber artists. I attended Dawn Edwards’ two felting classes and I wasn’t sure if I liked felting. It was always something I was curious about since my grandmother gave me a felted bed for my cat. She made it at one of her conferences. But on the drive back to DC I couldn’t stop designing felt hats in my head. 

I came home and created a fiber studio in my condo, you could say it’s a dining room sometimes. I taught myself to knit and crochet by watching YouTube videos, so I thought to start there and do the same with felting. I focused on small things like flowers. I moved onto designing my own phone bag that I used when taking the dog out.  I could carry my phone and keys at the same time without bringing my big purse with me.

As I continued trying to learn, I saw beautifully felted pieces that had dynamic surfaces with various textures in articles and posts online. I realized that I needed to learn from someone in the craft if I was going to ever learn how to make my projects as complex and beautiful. I lived too far from home and was working therefore following the same path as my mother and grandmother was not an option. But then I found an online surface design class taught by an artisan in Salt Spring Island, British Columbia - Fiona Duthie. Her online felt surface design class will likely come up repeatedly on this blog as I take the techniques she taught and move them forward. She taught me the foundations I needed for wet and nuno felting surface design.

Today in the Blogosphere

That is where I am today. I hope you will follow along with me as I move forward. My goal is to revive Lillian Russell Designs in my retirement. I’m not retiring anytime soon but, in the meantime, I can learn and blog!

Please follow me on your social media channel of choice and check back for my latest blog post. I will be treating this like seasons of a podcast. I will work on a project and write all about the experience after the project is complete. Don’t worry, I’ll document everything along the way. My first season is about my first exhibit experience. It is a very personal experience. I created three pieces for the show and there will be posts on each of them.

I will release my blog posts on Thursdays to be included in your weekend reading list.

FUN NOTE: The gif is my dog Maya plunging into the pool on doggy pool day in my neighborhood in DC. We have gone three years in a row, and she started off standing at the edge of the pool running back and forth whining to get in. This time she was brave and jumped right into the pool! Now nothing will stop her. She is my inspiration for this blog. I have been running back and forth on the edge trying to figure out how to get into the fiber arts pool. Today I took the plunge.