Blythe Church

I wanted to share this with you guys! A good friend of mine sent me this image on Facebook because she knows I'm crazy about anything fibers related, and she had just done some felting herself. After researching this image, I found that this felted typewriter was created by a Canadian artist by the name of Blythe Church. The typewriter was modeled after an old Underwood typewriter that was owned by her boyfriend's grandfather. The felt is hand-dyed and the details are embroidered. So beautiful! Blythe began sewing as a hobby on the side, and fell in love with it, which led to her soft sculpted creations. You can view more of her work at her website Sewn By Blythe. She creates an array of cameras, household items, and fun little monsters. You can also visit her blog to see her recent works. Please go visit!

Portfolio and Weaving Final

Hi everyone! Good news. If you go to the portfolio tab, you can now see a slide show of my work! Go have a look and let me know what you think! Here are some pictures of my weaving project while it was still on the loom and after completed. You can see larger images of it in the slide show as well. I made a throw and I used misti-cotton for the warp and the weft. The structure I used was a combination of the Huck structure. I had to make a 6 yd warp and do two panels on top of each other, cut the first half off and then finish the second peice. After getting it off the loom I had to wash and then join the two piece together to achieve the width of the blanket. I've been using my cozy blanket a lot given how cold it has been! I spent many hours awake working on this project and I had to overcome a lot of obstacles in the beginning, but just let me say it was all totally worth it!

In the beginning...

the warp

The weft yarn

Weave!

The end!!

Lacoste, France Here I Come!

I wanted to share some amazing news with you guys! Today I found out that I got into the study abroad program in Lacoste, France! I'm so excited. I will be going in the spring, and I can't wait to share my journey with you! I will be taking a History of Provence class and a Lights of Provence class for photography. I can't wait for the experience, and I'm still trying to wake myself up from the dream of going, because now it's real. I'm going to France!!

This picture was taken by a very good friend of mine, Melissa, who just got back from her journey there. She went for Fibers, and she has some amazing works of art that came out of it. I wish I could have been there with her, given that's my major as well, but the timing didn't work out for me. Besides the fact, I'm glad one of us could go to come back and share an unforgettable experience! I can't wait to see your face next quarter Melissa!! Melissa has a blog as well called Lissa Nancy, and I urge you to go visit and read out her amazing journey throughout France and Spain!

CAD Projects

Ok so I FINALLY get to relax and post some of my work! Here are some patterns I created in my CAD surface design class. Let me know what you think!

This project was a texture mapping project for furniture. We were to make patterns inspired by a news article that we found. I found an article in National Geographic about a graphic research team at the University of Washington that is designing a program to build 3D cities out of images taken from flickr. A lot of the buildings they have replicated from the images are from Rome (click here to view the article). My patterns were inspired by the elaborate motifs in Roman architecture for this project. The title of my theme is "Imperial Escape". This was presented in pdf format. I couldn't get the pdf pages on here so you could see the professional presentation, so this is the best I could do as of now.

(You can see more views of these in my portfolio.)

This project is my final. We were free to make any pattern we wanted and texture map them on to any surface and then present them in a powerpoint. My patterns are inspired by French and vintage styles. I mainly looked at French furniture to get inspiration and sketched my life away. I've always wanted to create a damask, so that's why I created one for my main pattern and then I created a stripe for a coordinate. I was so excited to put these onto stationery because it is one of my loves! I used the damask pattern to go on the cards and then used the coordinate as a fun surprise on the inside of the envelopes.

Copyright Andrea Yu 2009

Home for the Holidays!

Hey everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I feel like I'm still stuffed I ate so much food. My family was in charge of the desserts this year. My mom made a Kahlua cake, my brother made a chocolate chip pie, and I made a pumpkin cheesecake. There were all so delicious! I can't believe it's already the beginning of December. What's your wish list this Christmas?

Finals, birthdays, and lattes

So this last week is going to be crazy. I'm going through finals at the moment and can't wait to be finished and share my work. I'm weaving a blanket for my final in intro to weaving and I'm so excited to get it off the loom and show it to you guys! I've been crazy busy so haven't gotten a chance to post my work as often as I would like, but no worries, I have a month and a half break which is really nice. My birthday was today by the way! I'm legal now, the big 21, and my room mate turned 20 yesterday. Love birthdays! I hope you all are having a lovely fall so far. I love fall, it's one of my favorite seasons; the perfect time for lattes and pies, the best combo ever. Have a great weekend :)

Free Hugs!

The man who wants to spread love, joy, and happiness around the world by simply giving free hugs.

LOVE this. Read more about this sweet story here.



You can also check out the campaign's website!

Project 1 Sampling Complete!

Hi everyone! I hope you all have been doing fabulously well. As for me, I have truly missed blogging. I'm trying my best to multi-task given my hectic schedule with classes and work. Anyways, I wanted to share with you my first weaving sample! I've already shared a portion of it, and the rest includes experimenting with materials, and samples of twills, rib weaving, lacing techniques, making holes, enlaying, exposed warp, and irregular weft packing. There's more, but the list is exhausting! So much experimenting in one little sample. I was working with 120 warps. The enire sample is about 3 yards long. Today we learned how to draft. I'm a little intimidated, but we'll see how it goes! If anyone has any tips let me know!

Also, I am currently working on a really fun CAD project that I'll post up soon! I'll be done with the project next week :) Again, apologies for my lack of activity. Please do know that I love you all and I'm doing my best to keep you updated! Thank you to those who have been reading. Your support means so much to me. I hope you all have a wonderful rest of the week!

Repetition

Here are some images I thought were very nice and inspirational to me, being I'm working on repeat patterns at the moment. A very important element in design, repetition is everywhere if you pay close attention. We use it to create unity and rhythm, which is very pleasing to the eye. Next time your out and about, look around; trees, bricks, light posts, plants, etc.. all naturally create pattern that we don't even take notice to every single day.

{click image for source}

Weekend Weaving Experience!

So I must say, I am really enjoying the weaving process. Our assignment this past weekend was to experiment with different materials. I used thick twine, plastic rope and i dissected it to show different variations, I used natural multi-colored wool yarn, ribbon, and then I used white roving and alternated it with mercerized cotton twine. My favorite was putting the roving in because it bubbled up through the warp giving it a gorgeous texture! We were only to do 5 materials 2 inches for each, but I didn't want to stop!

Weekend Sprout!

As you know, I recently got a small parsley plant, and its first little sprout came out this weekend! It's been around ten days since I got it and I've been watering, watching, and waiting. The funny thing is that It rained so much this weekend and our window was leaking. I wonder if the rain water gave him a little boost. I'm so excited to see it continue to grow!

Happy Hump Day!

Hello! I apologize for being so sluggish on posting...I feel like I should be punished for it. My schedule is getting crazy! So this week for CAD we are taking a previous repeat pattern that we have designed and digitally altering it to a new one to fit as a wallpaper along with a coordinate. Today we had to present some wallpaper companies that inspired us. Out of the many companies I found, which were all beautiful in design by the way, TROVE (located in New York NY) stood out to me most. The wall paper is very abstract and illustrative. I think they are so beautiful and so different from what I'm used to seeing.

p.s. Today I threaded a loom for the first time! I'll take pictures of the loom so you can see :)

Have a Wonderful Weekend!

Hello! I must say, the first week of classes wasn't so bad. 20th century art is very interesting, and I think I'm really going to enjoy my weaving and CAD surface design class. Yesterday I learned how to measure my thread on a warp board for weaving. The process is actually very soothing. The motion of winding the yarn around the dowels is a calming and also thoughtful process. On the calming side, the motion is "like slow dancing" as my professor said, and on the thoughtful side have to keep count of how many warps you have counted out. No worries though, because if you lose count, there are a couple tricks that can help you count them back again in like 5 seconds.

I was going to let you guys know that majority of my posts will probably be inspiration I am looking at for projects throughout this quarter. Also, if any of you guys have any suggestions, or would like to share some inspiration that might be helpful, please do! Just shoot me an email or send me a link! I also hope you all have a fabulous weekend. Is anyone doing anything special?

One plan I have in particular is bike shopping! I can't wait. I would love to get a cruiser. I really need to save some money on gas. A bike would be perfect because I live in the middle of downtown and I can pretty much bike anywhere I want. Is there anywhere great online I can go to look for one? I am open to suggestions! I'm also going to the farmer's market, and I'm super excited about that as well. Remember that post I made about gardens? Well, let's just say I have like 1/16 of a small garden in our apartment. We have fresh basil plants, and I got a small parsley plant yesterday! Nothing is better than fresh herbs. Yum.

photo by Jena Ardel (click for source)

Our lovely little basil plants!

Weaving

Today I had weaving. I wasn't sure if I was going to like this class at first, but I actually think it's going to be a very relaxing class. I hear it's a great stress reliever, and believe me, I'll have plenty of stress that will need to be relieved this quarter. I'm a little intimidated about threading the loom, but everyone says once you do it a few times, it's not so bad. I was Etsy surfing today and came across weaver Cait Throop, a.k.a. Barefootweaver. Her work is absolutely gorgeous. She has been weaving since the 70s and owns 4 looms in her home. Cait weaves scarfs, blankets, wraps, bracelets, and even neck pieces. Because of her love for color, she even dyes her own threads! I love the texture she creates with all the different materials she uses to weave. Some of the materials she uses are rayon, cotton, chenille, silk, and tensil. I admire how passionate Cait is about what she does, and it definitely shows in her work.

pretty plaid

I'm love love loving this triangle scarf. I want it!

more gorgeous color and texture!

Surface Design

Today classes started and I got to begin my day with my fibers CAD class. We are going to learn how to create surface design digitally, and I can't wait to see what I and everyone else can come up with. My focus is going to be pattern for interiors because it's what I'm most interested in at the moment. I'm so excited. One of my favorite pattern artists is Amy Butler. She has my dream job! Amy Butler started out in the corporate world, and quickly realized it wasn't for her. She started off by selling her first set of handbags at a Spring Quilt Market in Kansas City where she found her first booth. No other small pattern companies had been designing for accessories, so Amy began designing her own line of fabrics for accessories, which launched her career, and now serve in a wide range of accessories for the home and fashion. Isn't her work so lovely and refreshing?

i

Her rugs are amazing!

'Sweet Life' Bags

Happy Weekend!

Today is such a lovely day! My roomies come in tonight. Not more loneliness! I hope you all are doing well, and I wish you a wonderful weekend ahead. As you know, the blog, A Cup of Joe is a daily read for me, and I just can't get over all the happiness and love being shared there at the moment. Joanna recently got married and her friends and fellow bloggers have been giving her their "Secrets to a Happy Marriage". Grace Bonney of design*sponge was one of the first to share her secret. I urge you all to go over and read! Lots of lovely images are provided as well. So read, smile, use these secrets, and have a fabulous weekend!

To see the story of these images, simply click!