embeadery's Profile

Bio

My name is Margaret Ball and I am, after many years of writing novels, free to devote all my time to my other passion – fiber arts. If I see fabric, thread, yarn, beads, sequins, Tyvek, Lutradur, or fiber-reactive dyes, I want to play with them and find out how far I can push the medium. I had a wonderful time for twenty years writing science fiction, fantasy, and historical novels, and now I’m looking forward to another wonderful twenty years of playing with my obscenely large stash of all the aforementioned materials. (OK, when we were paying off the second mortgage on the house I also wrote romance novels, but I’m not going to tell you the psuedonyms and anyway they’re all out of print.)

The only trouble with making Stuff is that it accumulates, and before you know it you own or have given away all the beadwork necklaces, cute little purses, and dyed scarves that you and all your friends and relatives can use. So now I’m also selling the stuff that I make. I like to think of it as completing a cycle. I use silk and velvet and beads out of my stash to create something beautiful....it goes out into the world where someone else can enjoy it and maybe use it as a starting point for their own creativity....money comes back to me and is promptly used to buy silk and velvet and beads with which I can now make something else!

The way I work is by building up images in layers, whether with dyes on silk, sheer fabric on solid fabric, or beads over foiled Ultrasuede. I never know what the finished product is going to look like until I have created the previous layer and the next layer reveals itself to me. When I don’t “see” a next layer that must be added, I’m done.

Silk Scarves

After enjoying several independent study workshops with Jane Dunnewold, author of Complex Cloth, I regretfully decided that making art cloth just for its own sake was not a path I wanted to follow. I have too much of an urge to cut up the cloth and do things with it. However, I love to use the processes that I learned from Jane, so I assuage my urge to dye, discharge, screen-print, and hand-paint fabric on plain black and white silk scarves. (The black ones look fantastic with iridescent paint markers – like raku, or antique gold, or stars going nova. ) I use Procion MX dyes on the scarves and wash out any unfixed dye particles thoroughly before proceeding to the next step. Any scarf that is treated with paints or paint markers is allowed to air-dry for five to seven days before the final heat fixing. If you treat my scarves kindly, hand wash them in cold water, and let them hang to dry, the images on them should last as long as the silk. If you throw them in the dryer, painted and foiled images will deteriorate from the friction, a little sneaky bit at a time, until one day your gloriously sparkly scarf isn’t any more. So be nice to your silk scarves and they’ll make you look fabulous!

Totes and Bags

So far I’m specializing in flat shoulder bags of various sizes, because that’s what I like to carry myself for a special evening out or a summer street festival – something that’s light and not too complicated, but that’s comfortably connected to my body so I won’t casually put it down while examining a crafts stall and then casually wander off without it. I use a variety of closures; see individual listings for details.

I have some small, unlined, 100% cotton bags which I personalize with my own blends of dyes, paints, and bead embroidery; others are made up from fabrics that are literally created, layer upon layer, by needle-felting and sewing. These bags consist of a wild melange of fabrics but are always lined with pre-shrunk cotton fabric. Sometimes I tuck small interior pockets into the lining; sometimes I don’t. I use a variety of clasps and closures depending on what feels appropriate for a particular bag; look at individual listings for the details.

Many of the bag straps are crocheted from ribbon yarns, strips of fabric, and other materials related to the body of the bag. Because of the tendency of crochet to stretch under tension, I hang up the straps with weights for 24 hours before finishing them and sewing them to the bag. The strap length should be stable after this.

Beadwork

I like to work in an additive manner, filling in a design bit by bit and letting the work lead me at each stage. The slow, meditative nature of bead embroidery supports this approach; in the time I spend working on a piece I come to know it almost as a separate entity that tells me what it wants done next. In addition, I love bead embroidery and freeform bead weaving for the freedom they give me to interpret each subject in its own way: the style of the work is not predetermined but is another part of the design. A piece inspired by Klimt’s formal, golden figures can be mostly linear, based on intersecting circles and squares; one inspired by the underwater glimmer of vintage shell buttons can be filled with sinuous, winding lines, spiral motifs and hints of hidden treasures.

Most of my bead embroidery pieces are worked on Ultrasuede; sometimes I paint Lacy’s Stiff Stuff and use that for a basis, if I want to cut niches in the work or have upward-pointing elements. All are lined with a second piece of Ultrasuede to cover the stitching and feel soft against your skin.

Female, Born on November 7

Favorite Materials

glass beads, dichroic glass, bits of antique and ethnic jewelry, silk, transparent fabrics, foil, fiber reactive dyes, bronzing powders, acrylic paints, Lutradur, anything shiny and glitzy