Hi Everyone,
Most people are not aware that we have added another team member here at The Oxford Company. Let me take a quick second to introduce you to Liz, who is now working with Christy to dye up our beautiful Violet Jane Rug Yarns. Liz also worked many years for McAdoo Rugs as a dyer, tracer, puncher, and what have you, so when I say she knows what she is talking about, she really does! Not to mention she is just a super fun person to have around the company!
Liz is hopping into our PALs crew and began by punching her very own Oval Abstract Botanical project. Liz, like Christy gave herself an added challenge. In this case, as someone who has been punching for years and dyes yarn, Liz's stash of yarn is massive. She likens it to having her own yarn shop in her house. Therefore she wanted to specifically use yarns that were in our staff stash here at work, thus really limiting her palette. She also wanted to handle this much like Christy, as an abstract. She decided to challenge herself this way because she never usually tackles abstract patterns. Usually when Liz works on a project it is a pictorial pattern, something that really tells a story.
For inspiration Liz used the pen and ink black and white drawings by Aubrey Beardsley, thus restricting her yarn selection to 2 variegated yarns and one white yarn for the whole project. Liz envisioned this as something that would lay on top of an antique vanity with glass vials of perfumes, necklaces, and a pair of reading glasses resting on top of it with a very art deco, 1920's vibe.
Selecting to use both the #10 regular and fine Oxford Punch Needles, Liz got to work. (This was also a challenge to her, as Liz doesn't tend to use fine point punch needles either!) Liz did have to split yarns as most of what we have in our stash here is rug yarn. Seeing as this wasn't going to be laying on the floor, another change up for her, she was excited to get to play around with the fine point punch needle some more and test how things worked and what she could get away with.
Liz allowed the materials to speak for themselves. She didn't want to have to pull out any sections, but to go with the flow of the piece. Liz wanted the loops to lay how they wanted and to not stress out too much about the whole process. Now, that's not to say she didn't poke loops around and clean up when she was done, because she most definitely did, she just wanted to make sure that she wasn't applying too much pressure on herself to make this look absolutely perfect and therefor driving herself mad!
You will notice that Liz did alter the pattern slightly, this gave her piece a lot of eye catching elements, especially with the simple color palette. Everyone sees something different when they look at her piece. I know that I see pottery from ancient Greece. Pottery depicting the trials of Hercules, or Odysseus. What do you see when you look at it?
One last thing I wanted to be sure to point out is the background of Liz's piece. You probably couldn't tell unless you have eagle eyes, but Liz and I used the same color for our background, Black Hollow. In my piece the color looked like a velvety chocolate brown, in Liz's it looks much more like a deep rich grey/black color. I have touched on this before if you recall, way back when with the Welcome Mat. Placement of colors and how they will appear to the eye is very much influenced by the other colors within a piece.
The Oval Abstract Botanical was really a challenge to Liz, a veteran puncher for the last 30 years, but mostly because she wanted to make sure she applied her own challenges in order to push herself out of her comfort zone.
This wraps up all of the crew here at the rug school! How are your projects coming along? Have you started or have you found your summer to be crazy and busy? I know that mine has been really nutty with kids activities, hiking, and commitments, what was really nice about this project was I could take it with me easily and punch in the wild.
Remember, if you enter in photos of your in-progress or finished #OxCoPALs Summer Stash Buster - Oval Abstract Botanical, you are entered to win a #10 regular Limited Edition Bamboo Oxford Punch Needle. All those who enter will receive a free drawstring tool bag. You have until Wednesday, August 2nd to enter your pictures! I can't wait to see what you all have done!
Any questions? Let us know!
Until next week! Happy Punching!
~Hannah
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