My Display

It took me several years to build up a display that finally works for me. Something that often is not mentioned in talking about displays is transportability. I am a rug weaver and usually bring 200 rugs to a show in order to sell 20. They take up a great deal of space in the van so I needed to find displays that were effective yet collapse. I also had to work with a very small budget and buy pieces a little at a time. Big investment was the tent... then the smaller pieces came over years. It takes us 2 hours to set up and about that to tear down.

I found a mess of beautiful candle holders that are perfect for holding my felted wool balls. I purchased some very cool small tiles from other artists to use as paperweights during windy sales.

I bought two standing racks at a Ben Franklin going out of business sale. They had previously been used to display and sell oil cloth table cloths. I needed to invent clamps though to keep the rugs from spinning off the racks. Those were made using boards and recycled bicycle tires (for gripping power) I had my name painted on them for an additional bit of publicity. The racks themselves are aluminum and go on top of the van. They are light enough that I can get them up there all by myself (although I do have to wipe all the bugs off them before each show). The rods then can go inside the van.

I finally found grid-work that I could use to hold a large quantity of product, yet still make it fairly easy to see and locate colors and sizes. The grids pack up into 16" cubes which make transport pretty easy.

I use the fitted covers on my card tables to hide any emergency items I need... tool kit, purses, small cooler of water and snacks, bags etc. The color of that fabric ended up being the color theme for my whole display. I had a beautiful large hunk of drapery fabric in brown which was just large enough to create the covers for my two card tables. It was such a nice neutral against the fiesta of color that I used that same brown along with cream to accents all the rest of my pieces where possible. Even my business card is brown and cream.

At another going out of business sale I procured a collapsible bin which has been a godsend for displaying the wool balls. It has three tiers, two of which rotate and has been the best display for stopping customers in their tracks. The whole thing collapses down almost flat, making it wonderful to travel with.

The most recent addition to the display has been my WebWorks sign. I have collected the tags off every shirt and pair of pants I have filleted in my rug making and they were perfect to quilt a sign out of, although I think I need to expand the sign to say Webworksfiber, but I have bins more of tags :)

While I am constantly on the lookout for new ideas, I am finally happy with a display design which works for me. I have gotten many positive responses from customers about the visibility and color of my display and most important they recognize me year after year.

Sorry it has been such a long time

I hope to be a better blogger... I have had a bit of a setback with my right arm, which put my weaving way behind. In case you do not remember I slipped on the ice at the end of December and wrecked my shoulder. Turned out to be a torn rotator cuff tear and bicep tear. I have had physical therapy which has gotten me to a much improved plateau. I can now move the arm with a minimal amount of pain most of the time. Weaving is still slow as well as caning. I did managed to get a couple chairs done over the past couple months and finish off my green warp as well. Been getting rug uploaded onto ETSY slowly but surely.

Now I really need to kick some weaving butt. Spoke to a surgeon on Wednesday the 25th and now have surgeon scheduled for the 21st of May. Now that a deadline is looming (pun intended) I feel the pressure of getting all the weaving, felting and caning I can get done in 6 weeks possible.

Wound on a brown warp last night and hope to get it sleyed today. A lady is bringing over three chairs to cane today so I need to fit that it as well.

oh Boy something Lucky

I just found out I won one of the Designstyleguide 12 days of Christmas giveaways.http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=35262541

I have a sister who has collected elephants ever since she was a little girl and now is a teacher who celebrates National Elephant day with her fourth grade students. I hope she will love this beautiful elephant as much as I do.

very nice to have this happen the day after my horrendous slip on the ice. typing is sort of hard for me today, but for this I will make the effort :)

thanks so much to all the artists who donated their wares.

Fiber Sculpture

I have been inspired to begin fiber sculpture again after a long long interval.


I first learned to crochet from my high school art teacher. He had just come back from a summer art studio and had learned free form crochet. It was very freeing to have learned to crochet free form objects rather than being held to the restrictions of a pattern for mittens or a scarf. Later I learned to do those as well, but I have always felt I could crochet a house with the right materials.

It feels good to be back in 3-D again after so many years of flat weaving, which has it's own challenges.

some of the new rugs just off the loom

I have been remiss in Blogging

I have been filleting a huge mass of bluejeans. My husband has graciously volunteered to cut them into usable strips while he stays up late watching and re-watching movies. It has taken almost the whole month to get them done. As I was taking them apart I got to thinking the zipper pulls looked very interesting. I have always saved all the labels from anything I took apart, but zipper pulls are new. I dug out the zippers from the bag I was tossing things into and clipped them out too.

My daughter and I are both of the opinion that one of something is rarely cool, but dozens of something are automatically awesome. I gave the pulls to her and she made three lovely necklaces out of them. I have convinced her to sell one on her ETSY site and I hope she can get some more done before she goes back to college soon.

I finished off the blue warp. Log cabin is a very strong warp and tends to overpower intricate patterns. It is great for playing with and I did get some nice checkerboard effects on a couple rugs. I will post pics when I get them photographed.

I got a nice long green warp wound onto the loom. I have enough rags to put on 55 yards of warp. I will be doing green for a long time I think. Most of my time now is spent cutting the rags. I sort of like to have them all in front of me when I design. I pull out this group and that group and ponder what will look best together.

I photographed half the new rugs and got the pictures squared away. My knees sort of gave out though so I will have to try to get the rest in tomorrow. I then have to get them uploaded into ETSY or Artfire.

Well back to work I guess

The summer is just flying by

I think I heard somewhere that this is supposed to be summer vacation. Ha! so far I have caned 5 chairs and one chair back and felted between 80 and 100 balls. I cannot seem to stop. Wound on 45 yards of blue and natural log cabin and with Maddie's help got it sleyed and tied on as well. Have woven three blue jean rugs and a couple flannels. I love how flannel packs down. One of the blue jean rugs I wove in a checkerboard pattern, which is very time consuming, but the result is quite lovely. That is the beauty of log cabin. Well I am off to fringe those rugs I took off the loom and maybe cut some more blue sheets.