Today I finished a scarf that I designed for the Texas Museum of Fiber Arts. I submitted it for an exhibit called "Texas by the Yard and Yarn - Texas a Fabrication." It will show at 100 Congress (the perfect location for 100 Scarves, right?!) in October and November. It's probably very ambitious of me to believe I might get in, but we have to dream, right? As Isabella Stewart Gardner said, "If you don't aim high, you can't get there."
The design represents the Texas landscape - the rivers running through the hills and mountains, then flattening out and eventually running into the Gulf. It's my first design that's meant to represent something else, and it was an interesting creative challenge for me. It began almost 10 feet long and then I used the same ruffling technique from Scarf 17 to create the hills and mountains, leaving it just under 6 feet in the end. I ran a little line of extra shiny blue through the deeper blue cotton to create a sparkling effect in the river and ocean.
A combination of two variegated yarns made the forests and plains - one in various shades of brown, the other browns and greens. I used the same weft yarn for the whole scarf - a juniper green cotton.
My ultimate goal is always to make a scarf that will feel good and look good, so I wanted to recreate the Texas landscape within those parameters. I'm very pleased with how it turned out.
Here are a few little moments in the life of Scarf 20.
Henry called tonight from a walk around the neighborhood to say, "I keep coming around a bend or over a hill and seeing a scene straight from your scarf! It really does look like the Texas landscape." Score. :)
Scarf 20 will stay off the market until I find out if it's made it into the show. Wish us luck!
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