Textile Arts Center

Textile Arts Center Online Shop!

I am so excited for the Textile Arts Center online shop to be finally open! The herringbone and hand-woven suspenders by Visnja are beautiful. The canvas totes are all dyed with natural dyes and also screen printed with natural dyes like logwood and indigo. Everything was designed and produced in the TAC studios in Brooklyn and everyone has been working so hard on it, I think it looks awesome. The Manhattan store will be open this week, I’m bringing my camera during set-up so hopefully I’ll have some photos to show the new space.

Sow+Dye Kit – Combo below = my personal Xmas gift to myself . The Sewing Seeds Project began in early 2011 with with a mission to preserve the growing and use of natural dyes as well as provide resources for our community. To date, the project encompasses classes and workshops, a Living Library in our community garden, digital and physical resources, and coming in early 2012, a Natural Dyes CSA.

Best of all, all the proceeds from these are going towards center activities including sponsorship and scholarships for kids to take textile classes at the center. BEST. GIFT. EVER!

Introduction to the Moccasin at Textile Arts Center

I just finished my moccasin making class at TAC and it was amazing to work more with leather! Got to learn great little details and intricacies about sewing with leather that aren’t always so easy to learn on your own. Leather is an entirely different material from fabric and I’m excited to experiment with it more with my bags and with more moccasins! Like maybe some hand sewn mocc house slippers. I thought it would be a nice way to help spread the word about the next moccasin class happening in November.

In fashion as in most other things, the debt we owe to Native American design, ingenuity and engineering is great. I’ve been more and more interested in learning traditional Native American crafts for awhile now and I’m currently taking Mark Schuyler’s October Moccasin Shoe Making class and getting an education in many things. Mark is a bona – fide, old – school character who is also a wonderful fount of knowledge on all things moccasin.

For instance, did you know that the fringe we all take for granted on those Minnetonkas and what I thought was decorative was originally intended to conceal one’s foot tracks from animals in the mud during hunting? Or that the Ugg boot is basically a rip – off of the ancient design of the Mukluk boot worn by the Inuit, Yupik and other aboriginal peoples in the Artic? (Apparently so are high – top sneakers according to Wikipedia). Ugg Boot vs. Mukluk. I think the winner is clear …

The most commonly recognized moccasin shape today is composed of a top vamp piece and a lower bottom piece in addition to a hard sole if it’s for the outdoors. Because a vamp can be tricky to sew for beginners, in this class we focus on designs that are vamp – less, but no less fun.

The patterns are taken from the Craft Manual of the North American Indian Footwear,which has been our little bible of sorts introduced to the class by Mark because it contains different patterns for the moccasin from all over North America’s various tribes.

There are patterns from the Inuit’s ‘Mukluk’ to the Navajo ‘Pueblo,’ the Apache ‘Pointed Toe’ and the Iroquois ‘Center Seam.’One could go traditional and follow a pattern very faithfully or one could go more modern and adapt the pattern to make a cool pair of house mocs. I’m so impressed with this manual. It’s more like a zine of collected wisdom. One of my next projects is to illustrate some of the patterns and create my own homage to George White’s Craft Manual of North American Indian Footwear.

This is a Sioux pattern that mine is plainer leather version of.

These are children’s moccasins from an exhibit staged by the ‘National Museum of Ethnology’ in Japan.

An Apache pair above

Another pair of Sioux moccasins housed at the Detroit Institute of Arts. The DIA is a great resource for exploring the art of the Sioux and Plains Indians.  The Craft Manual isn’t included in the class fee (but leather, waxed thread, leather sewing needles, awls and everything else is) but I recommend snagging a copy anyway, it sells for only 8 bucks at Crazy Crow Trading and I love looking at all the little feats of leather engineering devised to suit each tribes’ specific climate, locale and way of life. I asked Mark to elaborate a bit on his knowledge for potential folks out there who might be interested in shoe making and Native American moccasin techniques and his response has been  blurb for the class ever since:

“The footwear we call a moccasin has become defined by any footwear by all the Native American tribes of North and Central America. Usually known to be a soft-soled leather shoe, the variety and form of this object is far greater than the open leisure shoe we know and wear during summer months. Come and explore over seventeen different solutions handed down from Native American artisans, each honed over millenia to be the best foot covering for a particular region, climate and geography of North America. In this four-session workshop, participants will choose a style, make their own personal pattern, learn the craft of hand sewing leather, fit a sample, cut their patterns, construct and wear their own hand-made, but not home-made, leather footwear.”

Shoe Making- North American Footwear:

BROOKLYN LOCATION Sat  11:00AM – 2:00PM,  November 5 – December 3 

No class 11/26
Class Details: Click Here

Instructor(s): Mark Schuyler
Location: TAC – Brooklyn Location