A Scarf is Born Talking

A talking Scarf? That may sound odd to you. I'm guessing that most of you have never had a conversation with your scarf. For me, it's a different story. I have a long and sometimes intense coversation with each scarf that I create. I feel that I can only take partial credit for each one of my creations, the rest of the credit goes to the material. When I begin making a piece, I have some kind of idea in mind of what I want it to be, but not a total plan, because I need to get to know the piece, and work with it, in order to understand what it wants to be. Just like any relationship, if either one of us isn't listening to the other, or if we're in a bad mood, that emotion shows in the piece. My hope is that each piece demonstrates the essence of the joy that took place between me and the piece as it came into being

Scarf Stats:


Name: Coral Dreams
Material: Cotton and Painted PVC Pipe
Time it took to create: However long it takes to watch Notting Hill and Erin Brockovich
Started: 1/15/2012
Finished: 1/22/2012

I come up with the idea of using the chain crochet stitch to create a scarf, quiet some time ago. I've made three of four using this technique to date. On January 15, 2012, Coral Dreams demanded that I gave it my attention and bring it to life. Once the scarf decides that it wants to be created, there's no ignoring it, it has to be done, or it starts pounding and screaming in my head, which is rather distracting.


So on Jan 15, I began the process of creating all of the chains for Coral dreams.

From winter line 2012

To begin I just really thin yarn, almost like thread, and wrap it around my warp board to measure out 8 yards in length. I wrap it 3 to 4 times, and then chain crochet it off of the warp board.

From winter line 2012

I repeat these two steps 23 times, until I have this.

From winter line 2012

From winter line 2012

While I was working on these chains, I was trying to determine how this piece was going to be finished. And it came to me, it needed a large tube to go through, and that tube needed to be curved so that it would lay softly on the body. So off I went to the hardware store. I spend  a lot of time at the hardware store wandering through the plumbing asile. I have no clue what you are actually to do with the pieces that I buy, but I love to use them to create my textiles. So I found a piece of pipe that was the size that I wanted, and was light weight, but it was ugly. So next problem, how to make this pipe look good. I wandered into the paint asile and determined it needed to be painted a bright color. I'm normally night a big fan of pink, but the bottle of pink paint was practially jumping off the shelf at me, and I just had to ignore that part of me that doesn't like pink and bought it.

From winter line 2012

From winter line 2012

Once I had the pipe painted I knew that together Coral Dreams and I had solved a few problems and come up with a great new idea for scarf.  I knew that the piece was finished , one because the amount of chains that I made fit perfectly into the pink pipe, and two because Coral Dreams was silent, and I felt joy.

From winter line 2012

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