Yesterday I launched my latest design, Making Waves: A Drawstring Bag in my Etsy Shop! I also made a short video for it. My instructions are very, very detailed. I include everything from how to begin, to how to stitch this bag together and film all stages of the process. YouTube videos demonstrate every step so you can follow along. Each video is embedded within the instructions using Hotlinks. As I spend, literally, hundreds of hours video taping, editing and posting each video before embedding it within the instructions, my downloadable patterns are a bit more expensive. Not much. A little. People tell me they are well worth it.
This project began as a Stitch Along with a group of 17 hand stitchers who signed up for the class, which took place over Zoom. Over the course of 8 weeks we stitched this bag together and had a blast doing so.
A couple of people have asked me whether I will be doing this class again, so if you’re interested let me know as I will do it again, if there’s enough interest. The Zoom classes consist of eight one-hour classes although I would be open to doing a five-day workshop with classes running a 3-4 hours each. You can use your own threads or opt for a thread kit. If you choose a thread kit I will need to order in advance and we will have to wait until everyone has theirs to begin. This can take anywhere from one to two months, depending upon availability of the threads and how many people want kits.
I am also beginning a new design, which will be another Stitch Along, meaning that I will be designing this project as we go! What’s fun about that is that each week I unveil a new part of the design, which is fun and exciting. Once I have the basic background concept designed, I will post more about it. Right now I’m in the midst of throwing a lot of different ideas around and seeing which one I like best as well as determining which will make the most sense to add a lot of embellishing to it. As with the Making Waves design, I will be incorporating a great many different techniques and materials, such as hand dyed t-shirt scraps, hand dyed cheesecloth, wool roving, Dorset Buttons, beading, ribbon work and other fun things like that.
Dorset Buttons in the Background of Making WavesHand-dyed and Ruched CheeseclothHand -Dyed t-shirt
With all my free time (insert eyeroll and a sigh here), I designed another zippered pouch! This time an abstract design – Playing with Shapes and it’s a little bigger than my Rhino Pouch. This one is 14″ x 12″. It is also fully lined, has a zipper and the wool front is perfect for applique and stitching. The PDF pattern, templates and detailed instructions with tons of photos are up on my Etsy shop. Everything you need to make this, is on Sue Spargo’s website.
Other than that, I haven’t been able to design much as I’ve been spending every spare minute researching YouTube, taping, editing, re-taping, editing some more, learning how to make a decent thumbnail (I still need to work on that) adding music and then watching other people’s YouTube videos to learn even more.
I’ll admit, so much of this was new to me as of two weeks ago, but now? Talk to me about SEOs, keywords, banner art, thumbnails, end cards, playlists, analytics, reach, monetization, and did I mention that I had never edited anything on iMovie ten days ago? I now know my way around not only iMovie, but Canva, and YouTube studio, versus the older Creator Studio Classic. I’m by no means a pro, but I’m getting the hang of it. And here’s the thing, I still have SO much to learn.
My latest thumbnail and video
Some of the most successful YouTubers out there are doing tutorials on… wait for it… how to be a successful YouTuber! Now that’s irony and soooo meta! But perhaps the most surprising thing of all, is how much I enjoy making videos. I am constantly learning, but am loving the process.
I thought I would be posting one tutorial a week, but, in the last two weeks , have posted five, with one more taped, but not edited and another, in the works. Evidently you’re supposed to have a regular schedule and post at the same time and day, but right now, as I’m just getting my feet wet, I figure I’ve got time to work all of that out. My next video will be demonstrating the Bullion Knot and after that how to applique a circle.
A month ago I taught a 2-hour stitching workshop exploring shapes and stitches at my quilt guild. It was a huge success, and lots of fun! I prepared squares of wool and precut circles in different sizes. More than 20 people attended and each person got to pick a wool square and some circles, which they then whipstitched on to their wool base. As most of the participants already knew how to do some of the more basic stitches such as the Running Stitch and Backstitch, I taught how to do the Bullion Knot and a Cast On Bullion stitch. (We only had two hours) It was a lot of fun! I really, really love teaching.
Through one of the participants (who also happens to be a friend) of that workshop I was introduced to one of the owners of the last remaining quilt shop in New York City, Gotham Quilts – New York City’s Quilt Shop. It was a terrific meeting and as a result of that meeting, I will be teaching a 6-hour Creative Stitching workshop playing with shapes using many of Sue Spargo‘s techniques in April. If you’d like to sign up for it, you can, by clicking ‘here‘. The workshop is on April 25th from 11:30 – 6. Everyone will get a “kit” which will include precut circles, a wool square base, wool thread to whipstitch the shapes onto the background, needles, lots of different kinds of threads to play with, tons of Perle Cotton threads, a piece of silk velvet, some stabilizer for the silk velvet, a sampling of beads, buttons and silk ribbon. I am SO excited and hope some of you will join me!
For those of you unfamiliar with Gotham Quilts, it opened in 2014 and is located at 40 West 37th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues in the heart of Manhattan and just a block from the Garment District. Two friends, Andrea and Ivete, own and run it. Over the years they have expanded what began as a tiny shop on the second floor, to a multi level space, carrying a wonderfully curated selection of fabrics and notions as well as Bernina Sewing Machines. They are now open six days a week, everyday but Sunday, from 11 – 6, and on Thursdays until 7pm.
Gotham Quilts
I hope to see some of you there!
Have you checked out my latest YouTube video? My channel is: Ariane Zurcher – On the Other Hand where I give tutorials on all things involving stitching, sewing, design and creating. I will be doing videos that are for Left Handers, but others that are not hand specific. So join me, and stitch along!
Tutorial: How stitch the Pekinese Stitch
How to stitch The Coral Stitch with 2 (okay 3) variations!
“Crafts” have occupied a large part of my life. I was fifteen years old when I knitted my first sweater. My mother taught me to knit when I was so young my fingers had trouble wrapping the yarn around them. I didn’t realize it then, but being left-handed certainly must have made it more difficult for me to learn, yet learn I did, and to this day I knit as a right handed person does. It was the beginning of a love affair. When I was in my twenties I had a brief moment when I was the editor of the “How To Knit” page in Elle Magazine.
Ariane Zurcher DesignsAriane Zurcher Designs Capelet and Sleeves
My mother also taught me to do embroidery and sewing, this was in the days when knitting and fabric shops were as abundant as Starbucks. It was a special occasion when my mother would drive me to San Francisco so we could visit Britex, which carried the most luxurious silks and fabrics from all over the world. When I moved to New York City there was a little knitting shop on Sixth Avenue in the village that had hand dyed and spun specialty yarns. They were out of my price range as I was a student on a budget, but I would wander into that shop and just smell the wool and gaze at the beautiful colors, coveting the skeins that hung like candy along the walls.
Emroidered Creche my mother & I made when I was a teenager.
My father, born and raised in Paris, used to do Petit Point, at least this is what he called it, though in fact I believe he was doing what in America we call needlepoint. It was my father who taught me how to do basket weave needle point so the back of the tapestry resembled a basket weave, and was not as prone to warping the fabric and lay flatter or so he insisted. He looked down upon those who did their needlepoint by going back and forth horizontally. I have a pillow he made for me with the letter A prominently displayed in the center, it’s tattered back and edges giving clues to how old it now is.
The Pillow my father made for me
When I came to New York City it was because I’d been accepted to Parsons School of Design. My love of fabrics, sewing, knitting and all things crafts-related propelled me into the world of fashion design. It was an uneasy alliance and ultimately one I could not reconcile. I learned early on that anything “Crafts” related was the sullied, unkept cousin to “high fashion.” Crafts were what housewives did, it wasn’t the sort of thing an “artist” indulged in. So the thing I loved most, creating things by hand, became the thing I felt ashamed of. The world of fashion and the designers whose work hung on exquisitely tall and impossibly thin models, exemplified all that I wasn’t. My love of crafts became something I began to hide and even reject. It was “woman’s work” and if I was ever to make a career for myself, it was best to put those “childish pursuits” behind me.
“Craft” has begun to get its well deserved recognition and I couldn’t be happier. It is no coincidence that female artists in general are generating more interest in museums and galleries. Women’s work finally elevated to more prominence in a male dominated world is as it should be. “Craft” and all that it encompasses is yet another way we have been taught to undermine, under value and even ridicule work done by, mostly, women. We have a lot further to go, but it is wonderful to see that beginning to change!
I am left-handed. While only about 10% of the population is left-handed, there are a great many who work in the arts. I don’t know that a greater percentage of artists are left handed than in the regular population, but I do know that we lefties have had to come up with a great many work arounds to accommodate our left handedness in a world set up for right handed people. I am also left eared, left footed and left eyed, meaning that I am able to hear, see and kick better with my left side. Also, weirdly and this may border on TMI, when I was nursing my two children, then babies, it was my left breast that filled with milk far more readily than my right.
Moving right along…
When I found the artist Sue Spargo and began learning the stitches she uses in her work, I found it challenging. There were certain stitches that no matter how much I tried, mine didn’t look the way hers did. The Pekinese Stitch is an example of that. I remember doing her Fresh Cut Block of the Month and she used that stitch on one of her flower stems. I kept trying to replicate what she was doing, following her instructions, as laid out in her book Creative Stitching, but somehow my Pekinese Stitch looked all wrong. Finally, when I was with Sue I showed her what I was doing and she said, “Oh, but you’re doing it as though you were right handed, but with your left hand!” Then she showed me how to do it left handed. It was a game changer! (I have since taught myself how to do this stitch using either my right or left hand.)
The Pekinese Stitch using my right hand (on purple wool) and left hand (on green wool)
I’ve encountered similar issues when trying to learn how to needle turn appliqué, sew on a sewing machine, put a zipper in, buttons, and any number of other things that I’ve attempted over the years.
In the coming months I am collaborating with my favorite artist on a You Tube project that we think will help us lefties in the world! Stay tuned.
I’ve been alive for over half a century and have witnessed a great deal of beauty as well as tragedy, both personally and in the world. However the current political climate is unlike anything I have ever experienced. The take away from the past three months is that we Americans are as divided, if not more so, as we’ve ever been. Our planet and its people are in jeopardy and we Americans are in crisis. Even those who backed the current administration seem unable to accept that their man has won and leave it at that. There is a combative rage that masks the fear and despair of so many.
What I find most helpful in coping with my concern regarding the world and our place in it, is to take action, speak out, write letters and postcards, make phone calls, join protests, get involved and take at least a couple of daily, anonymous, kind, actions toward another human being. And then, with whatever time I can carve out, I create. Every day. I work on something, whether it is my Ode to Matisse Quilt, which I’m now free motion quilting (yay!) or working on a block of the month or throwing pots or painting or sketching out new ideas, I create. Every day. It’s the thing that has always saved me over these past 56 years. I create.
When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a fine artist. I loved pen and ink, but also acrylic paint. I studied with the great Nate Oliveira, who also happened to be a close friend of my parents. While at Parsons School of Design, one summer I took classes at the Art Institute of Chicago. I painted, drew, designed, sewed, embroidered, knitted, wrote… I have explored many different artistic mediums, but in the end, I kept going back to designing, whether it was hand knits, fashion or jewelry, design was what I did, more often than not, to earn money. But fine art, is always there, somewhere in the background informing it all.
Last month I took out my paint brushes and began painting again. It’s been years, no decades! I’d forgotten how much I love it. The following images are all collages with acrylic paint and a variety of other things, such as pastel, ink, torn newspaper, cardboard, etc.
Red
On the Horizon
Dawn
Obscured
America
Wishing everyone a peaceful day filled with creativity and ART!
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