Vera Gierke Studio

Just starting my first small project on my new 8” Chloe Mirrix Looms. I sometimes double warp the selvedges but not this time. But this is my first time doing double half hitches for the header, previously I’ve used twining.

Next Saturday Aug15 I’ll have this seaweed pressing Nantucket Sea Garden II in the Craft Fair at the Saltmarsh Senior Center on Washington St, Nantucket. Along with this I’ll have other seaweed art, some cyanotype prints, some of my beach feet collages and greeting cards. The art is all Nantucket based. The Fair runs 10-12, come see how I’ve incorporated Nantucket into my art.

I’m adding embroidery to a tapestry weaving that I did in a very shortened version of a course from weaving - Lucy Jennings. I have so many things to learn about tapestry so I do some abbreviated projects. It’s really slow because I’m slow, but that’s part of the fun —not grinding out a finished product.

I did my first tapestry weaving about 2 month ago with Woven Seas Weaving Studio and there’s so much to learn - new vocabulary, yarns, frames, people, resources - and the best way to learn is to just dig in. That’s what I’ve done! I’ve tried weaving different shapes, I’ve tried a few courses, had to figure out what loom to use, find where I could get some answers, what were the helpful resources and helpful people, join different weaving groups and so on. I finally decided on a Chloe Mirrix Looms which is what this is. I’ve been using it for one day and really find it very user friendly. Here I’m exploring different ways to work with the threads. However, I can’t figure out how to use the stand! Mirrix says to put a hole in your cartoon and insert the stand through that hole. The stand is an inch wide so the hole would take a sizable chunk from the middle of the cartoon which might be only 4-5”. That doesn’t make sense! Does anyone have a better suggestion?

weaving - Lucy Jennings

Today I did seaweed pressing with Lori Loftus of the Nature Printing Society at the Nantucket Historical Association 1800 house. Besides pressing local seaweed we printed the seaweed on Jelli plates which is what I was doing here. The second image is what I was printing when Lori took the photo and the last image is a different seaweed and different color. This was a new to me part of seaweed art!

Today I did experimental eco dying on silk with botanicals in a class at Nantucket Historical Association led by Lori Loftus with the Nature Printing Society.
The first image is me unfurling the scarf after steaming and the second shows much of what was printed. We also printed 4 napkins that I’ll pick up tomorrow, and I’ll post some of that too. It was really fun to see the different scarves using a variety of colors.

I picked up my Gayle Elliott needlepoint again to do what I often do, tear out something stitched and restitch. This time it was the wine glass, I used slightly sparkling for the wine (and made it puffy) and silk lame for the glass. Then I decided that my initials on the glass needed sparkle so I added one strand from the Tilli Tomas over my VG.
I think I’m done redoing the wine glass and bottle. Next redo is the whale.

In a diversion off the cyanotype printing in blue, I’m making my first attempt at anthotype printing using tumeric. It’s the same process of using the rays of the sun to create the image, just using timeric rather than the cyanotype chemicals. These prints are supposed to stay out in the sun longer, and then get washed in a bath of baking soda. It will be fun to see what happens!

I just added the NDLPT label to my carry-all needlepoint bag from . I already had the NDLPT canvas from and had been stitching it in these neutral colors. I finished the stitching with the binding stitch and used to adhere it to the bag. The bag just happened to have the NDLPT letters on the front in plain block letters, and now it has the perfect way to show off the bag.