I have heard a lot of interesting comments about my work over the years. Some of them have been wonderful. Some of them have made me cringe. And some of them have left me completely speechless.

This is one of the speechless ones.

The Demonstration
I love showing people how I create my thread paintings. There is something deeply satisfying about watching someone's face change as they begin to understand what they are actually looking at. So when a woman stopped at my booth one afternoon and wanted to know what I was doing, I was happy to show her. I happened to be working on a section that was perfect for demonstrating, so I walked her through the whole process.

I showed her how I study the reference photograph to get the shape and size of each element just right.

I showed her how I cut each tiny piece of fabric - less than an inch long, sometimes much smaller - with scissors.

I showed her how I glue each piece down to the canvas, one at a time, layering colors the way a painter layers paint.

And then I showed her the stitching. The dense, time-consuming, back-and-forth machine stitching that blends all of those tiny fabric pieces together and gives the finished piece its texture and depth.

I explained that depending on the complexity of the design, a single small section can take several hours to complete. I explained that a finished thread painting can represent weeks of work.

She watched the whole demonstration. She listened to the whole explanation.
And then she asked me, "Where did you buy the kit?"

The Kit.
My mind went blank.
Then it started racing.
Did you not just watch me do this? Did you not listen to any of what I just said? Does this look like something that came in a box?
All of that went through my head in about two seconds. What came out of my mouth was considerably calmer.

"It's not a kit."

I still don't have a better answer for that one. Some things just defy a response.


Why It Matters
I tell this story because it perfectly illustrates something that every fiber artist and textile artist eventually comes to understand: people simply do not know what they are looking at.

And that is not an insult. It is just the reality of working in a medium that most people have never encountered before.

When someone sees a painting, they understand - at least in general terms - that a person stood in front of a canvas and applied paint with a brush. When someone sees a photograph, they understand that a camera was involved. But thread painting? Fiber art? There is no cultural shorthand for it. No reference point. No frame of comparison. So they reach for the closest thing they can find. And apparently, sometimes that thing is a kit.


What Goes Into a Thread Painting
Since there is no kit, let me tell you what there actually is.
There is a reference photograph, usually one I have taken myself. There is a design transfer process. There is a collection of fabrics - often dozens of different fabrics for a single piece - sorted by color and value.

There is a lot of cutting. Tiny pieces, carefully shaped.

There is gluing. Slow, deliberate, one piece at a time.

And then there is the stitching. Hours and hours of stitching, section by section, with a sewing machine running free-motion - meaning I control every stitch by hand, guiding the fabric in any direction I need to go. A computerized machine cannot do this. No machine can do this on its own. Every stitch is a decision.

When it is finished, the result is a piece that people sometimes mistake for a painting. A piece that makes them move closer, then step back, then take their glasses off. A piece that makes them ask what kind of brush strokes I used.
Not a kit.

If you'd like to see some of the finished results, visit the Thread Paintings gallery. And if you'd like to own a piece — or a product featuring one of my designs — you can find them in my shop.

No kit required.

I have been the unlucky recipient of the comment, "That's not real art," more times than I care to remember.

I have also been turned away by arts organizations because my work doesn't fall into one of their approved categories. No painting. No sculpture. No membership for you. And why?

Because I work with fabric.

The Problem with Fabric
Here's the thing about fabric. It has a reputation.

Fabric and textiles have a prescribed, socially acceptable purpose: clothing and home décor. These things are functional. We use them every day. We see them every day. We throw them in the washing machine without a second thought.
You can't do that with art, right?

That's the assumption, anyway. The moment people see fabric, their brain files it under "functional" and moves on. The idea that it could be fine art — that it could hang in a gallery alongside oil paintings - doesn't even register. This preconceived notion is hard to shake. I know because I've spent years trying to shake it.

So What Did I Do About It?
I could have given up. I could have decided that if the art world didn't want me, I didn't want them either.

Instead, I got to work.

I studied other artists - what I sometimes jokingly call "real" artists. I observed their techniques. I absorbed their aesthetics. I paid attention to composition, color, depth, and texture. And then I applied everything I learned to my own work.
I pushed myself. Hard.

The Moment Everything Changed

The turning point came at an art show. A woman walked into my booth and stopped in front of one of my pieces. She moved closer. Then she stepped back. Then closer again. She took her glasses off, put them back on, and tilted her head.

I've seen people study my work before, but this was different.

Finally, she asked me a question I had never heard in all my years of exhibiting at shows: "What kind of brush strokes did you use?"

Brush strokes.

She thought I had painted it.

I was so caught off guard that I laughed. When I finally composed myself, I told her the truth: "A sewing machine."

Now it was her turn to be surprised.

That moment opened the door to one of my favorite conversations - explaining my process of thread painting to someone encountering it for the very first time.

What Is Thread Painting?
Thread painting is a form of fiber art that combines fabric and dense machine stitching to create works that closely resemble - and are often mistaken for - traditional paintings.

Here's how it works.
I start by cutting tiny pieces of fabric, usually less than an inch in length, and gluing them down to my canvas. Then comes the part that requires the most patience: stitching. I cover the entire canvas in dense layers of thread, section by section. Depending on the complexity of the design, a single small section can take several hours.

The stitching does two things. First, it blends the colors of the fabric underneath, much the way a painter blends pigments on a canvas. Second, it creates a rich, layered texture that is uniquely characteristic of textile art - something you simply cannot achieve with paint and a brush.

The result is a piece of contemporary fiber art that holds up to close inspection from every angle. Step back and you see the image. Step forward and you see the texture. Put your glasses on. Take them off. It works either way.
You can actually watch part of this process - specifically the fabric gluing stage - on my Cobblestone Pathway page.

Fine Art Takes Notice
After that art show, something shifted.
My work began to be accepted into exhibits and galleries I hadn't been able to crack before. What followed was a series of shows that meant a great deal to me:

• Page-Walker Art Center – Cary, North Carolina
• Colony Theatre – Burbank (solo show)
• City of Buena Park – (solo show)
• West Valley Art Museum – Peoria, Arizona
• Saddleback Art League – rotating exhibit
• Orange Open – Orange Art League
• Fallbrook Art Center
• Art That's Small – City Hall, Laguna Beach

The same work that had been rejected by arts organizations was now hanging in galleries and museums. Nothing about the work had changed - except that I had gotten better at making it, and the art world was starting to catch up.
Fiber art and textile art have a long, legitimate history in fine art. Major museums around the world collect and exhibit work in these mediums. The bias is real, but it is also losing ground.

Where I Am Today
I still occasionally create traditional quilts - you can see some of my earlier work on the Art Quilts page. But my focus these days is squarely on thread paintings.
If you'd like to see what thread painting looks like as a finished piece, head over to the Thread Paintings gallery. Take your time with them. Move closer. Step back.
And if you find yourself wondering what kind of brush strokes I used - you can see them up close in my shop. Every piece looks different depending on how close you get. Some things you really do have to see for yourself.

Every year I create a special Christmas card with a new design. Most years I have been so busy selling at shows that I didn't have time to do anything fancy. This year was different. I haven't been able to do any shows this year due to the stroke I had in May. So, this presented me with the opportunity to take my time with the cards.

So, for your enjoyment, here is my process for this year's fiber art Christmas tree cards.

First I lay out the sky. These are tiny little pieces of fabric. I have attached a heat activated glue (Wonder Under) to the back of the fabric before cutting. Then I use my mini iron to attach the pieces to some heavy interfacing.

After stitching the sky, I lay out the snow fabrics. The sky is stitched with a lot of thread with a long stitch. The stitching blends the different color fabrics together much like a painter blends paints on a canvas.

The snow is stitched using the free motion foot. That means I can more easily control the placement of the stitches to follow the curves of the snow banks.

Next is the tree. First the tree trunk is stitched down. Then I iron the green fabric for the basic tree shape.

For the tree I use a green thread and free motion work to get the look of pine needles.

Here's what the back looks like so you can see all the stitching.

Lastly I glue the artwork onto card stock, trim off the excess, add my label, and sign and number the cards. And now they're ready to go out in the mail.

In case you hadn't heard, I suffered a stroke back in May.  I have gone from being barely able to get out of bed to being able to hobble around with a cane. I am definitely getting better as the days go by.

I have been to lots of physical therapy sessions. They gave me lots of exercises to do. But one of the most important things they told me was to do familiar things around the house. And what is more familiar to me than sewing?!?!? I have been doing lots of sewing in the last couple of months. It has really helped with my rehabilitation. And it's been a change from my usual sewing where I am trying to make enough items to sell at shows. Since I am physically unable to do shows, I can take my time and enjoy the sewing process.

I started out with smaller projects like the crossbody bags and eyeglass cases. Then I moved on to a more difficult bag project, a padded laptop/music bag. Then it was on to the quilts. Those ended up being a real upper body workout. You don't really realize how much effort it takes to push around several pounds of fabric. It was great exercise!

With all that rehab work I was finally ready to tackle some artwork. But I thought I would start small and do Christmas cards. More on that in the next post.

I've been really bad about this whole blogging thing. No promises about being better in the future, I know myself too well. So, the occasional blog post will just have to suffice.

So, here's what I've been working on. NFTs! Yup, I'm getting back into the whole technology thing. I never would have thought that my engineering degree was going to come in handy for my art career.

For my first collection of NFTs I am starting from one of my existing thread paintings, California Poppies, and modifying it in various ways. If you're not familiar with NFT's it stands for Non-Fungible Tokens. Simplified, it means that you can buy one of my digital pieces of artwork using cryptocurrency.  You can then have it printed on canvas, or a t-shirt, or whatever. You could also display it on a digital frame. Or you can just keep it and hope that it increases in value so you can sell it later for a nice profit. (No promises there either.)

So here's the original Poppies artwork:

And here are a few of my digitally manipulated images:

The bottom three are repeated patterns from a small chunk of one of the images. I've even got some videos in the works. More on that later. Now I need to get back to creating the rest of the collection. I plan on having 31 NFTs in this collection: 10 digitally manipulated, 10 patterns from the digitally manipulated images, 10 videos of the patterns, and 1 digital image of the original artwork.

You can view the collection here:
https://solsea.io/collection/620e0d8b58140b5aff35df8e
There's nothing in it yet. I need to get a few more pieces of artwork finished before I put them into the collection.

Thank you to everyone who came out to Laguna Beach to see my work at the Laguna Art-A-Fair Festival. I am grateful for each and every one of you!

SEWER IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Loretta Alvarado
by Vickie Yahn Bieniak
Loretta, a fiber artist, can usually be found working on her art, bags, scarves and various other artistic endeavors. Lately however she has been keeping her sewing machine busy with making masks for HMC. She has donated over 100 yards of fabric and has made over 360 masks.
Interestingly enough, Loretta was an engineer at JPL until 1992 before becoming a professional artist. She never thought herself to be an artist when she started participating in craft shows but her artwork was so well received, she transitioned to art shows. Loretta said the shift from working with engineers to artists was very interesting. She had to go from facts to feelings!
Loretta had her own art gallery in Laguna Beach with a very successful exhibit called “In the Toilet – An Exhibit of Art Meets Function”. She also is an author, lecturer and teacher helping artists grow, develop and market not only their art but themselves. You can find her series of books “The Shy Artist Guide” on her website: LorettaAlvarado.artor on Amazon.
Today, Loretta displays and sells her work at art shows spanning from Arizona, Northern California, Las Vegas and San Diego. This year would have been her 20th year at Art-A -Fair in Laguna Beach where she is on the Board of Directors but they had to make the hard call of postponing this year’s show. If you would like to see or purchase her artwork please go to: Rettacat.art
Loretta has made three instructional videos on mask making that she has posted on our HMC page and is currently thinking about creating a 4th video regarding children’s masks.
Loretta has been a champion for artists and now we are fortunate to have her champion for the Healthcare Mask Collaborative. Thank you, Loretta for your generous donation of time, masks, fabric and information.

Stained Glass Bags

I don't quite know why, but I love making bags. I have been thinking about it and I wonder if it is because of the 3-D aspect. Maybe it lets me exercise the spacial area of my brain.

Or maybe it's because I can create something that is both artistic and functional.

Well, whatever the reason, these are my five latest creations.

All of them except the red and gold one were created using chunks of fabrics off of other projects. For example, the blue silk one on the bottom left was from the excess fabric cut off when I made a jacket. The floral one was the leftovers from a vest.

I just love it when I can use up stuff that I would normally have thrown away. Especially when it results it something gorgeous!

Here are completed prototypes #1 and #2:

There's even a pocket for a corkscrew. And two bottles fit comfortably inside.

There are still improvements to be made. I'll share version #3 later.