thread window

I mentioned in an earlier post that Nancy Topolski was going to use some of my work in a window display at Thread.  Well she's finished installing and it looks fabulous - thank you, Nancy!  I'm so excited that she wanted to use my pieces in her gorgeous installation.  I'm especially pleased that the strange pods I made for my thesis work have found another purpose besides sitting awkwardly in my living room.

The white pod shapes with cream and yellow flowers are mine.  I had at least 15 of them in various sizes for my thesis show, including one that grew from the ceiling and was about the size of mini van.  All are made from constructed chicken wire covered in hand-stitched muslin fabric.  Some of the pods are hollow and stitched on the inside as well.  The flowers are made from found paper that I have collected over the years.  Most of the paper was saved from a warehouse I worked in helping my paleontology professor sort through the university's fossil collection!  The flowers were cut, twisted and then individually dipped in beeswax and sewn onto the pods.  The finishing touches are horse hairs (collected from my family's farm) that are threaded through the muslin fabric and left to poke out in tufts at various points on the pod.

The garlands are a more recent production.  Over the past summer a friend of mine who was getting married asked me to create something out of the flowers for her wedding decorations.  Voila, the garlands were born.  I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.  I was thinking about trying to sell them on Etsy once they're done looking pretty at Thread...