In about 1984ish, I was in a second-hand store and I saw, (and purchased), a pin that was basically a button form covered with some kind of vintage fabric. It wasn’t constructed well and, I thought to myself, “I can do better than this”.
I then started looking for vintage Asian textiles.
Going forward a little bit in time, I was at a party with friends and met Kitty Noble.
She had been designing and working with vintage Japanese kimono fabric. She told me that she had small scraps of fabric that I could have. I went to her studio began making jewelry using scraps. I had been weaving for some time and then started experimenting with pin weaving with the scraps. Kitty and I began our collaboration.
It is a personal style and approach.
The woven purse is a flat-weaving or pin weaving; takes a lot of ironing and placement of the materials.
For other woven purses, I use the loom and use the concept of weaving called Sakiori. It is basically rag weaving and can extend the life of a textile by cutting the fabric in a continual strip and then weaving it as the weft of a fabric.
I also make the same purse shape using shredded floor waste from my studio; the floor waste is the fabrics that
are leftover from my cutting table, they are then shredded and then reconstituted into new fabric.
Lastly, I piece various fabrics together to form a new fabric that is cut into a variety of purse forms.
Purses are currently sold at:
JANM (Japanese American National Museum) - Los Angeles
Craft Contemporary - Los Angeles
Imagine Artful Things - Montecito