About Me

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I am a studio artist and textile designer. My work swirls around among art, design, and the joy of making things. I founded LFN Textiles Artists Ribbons in 2002, and have been designing these fairly wonderful ribbons for 8 years now. They are distributed for the wholesale market exclusively by Renaissance Ribbons, and are available at retail on my website, www.lfntextiles.com, and nationwide through fine fabric stores, gift shops. My tapestries are available through a number of galleries across the country as well. See the links section for contact information.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

pocket fun




I get a little thrill out of having things manufactured. Why is that? It is like major birthday when the objects arrive -- that is why I started my ribbon business. It wasn't enough, I suppose, to make one of a kind tapestries every few weeks; I needed thousands of yards of fabric which sprang from my prolific interior designer. Well, not jsut that, I suppose: I love having things made which I can't make myself here in the studio by hand, and it also throws the handmade into a special new light for me, often when I am taking it for granted. Making cloth by hand is totally unlike the kind of cloth one can have manufactured -- both can be wondrous but they exercise different attitudes for me.

A long way around to introducing my new toy -- a pocket mirror design. I have thought these little things were charming for some time. Last year, for Arts In Harmony (the art fair for which I was the founding chair here in New Harmony -- coming up again this May!) we had little pin on buttons made with various artist's imagery and sold them as a little fund -- fun -- raiser. So great! What is it about these little tschotskes! so far from my MFA...

The same company that made the buttons, Busy Beaver in Chicago, makes pocket mirrors, so I had a bunch made with the Dahlia ribbon design I am so fond of. Then I decided to make little felt cases for them -- a sweet and fun day's project on what I call my toy sewing machine. This is an inexpensive Janome which makes 5 or 6 pretty little embroidery stitches.
I am almost embarrassed to tell you how much fun I had making these: using all these luscious colors of wool felt, I found quite happily that this ribbon goes with the whole rainbow (well, a slightly pastellated version of it). Coordinating color is sort of a crucial aspect of designing trim, after all!

The finished products are on etsy (where else?)

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