Starlings, pussywillows, illustrations-in-progesss

Captured: studio images, March 2011

This Sunday morning, before I go to work, I'm taking a moment to share some images I've captured in the studio this month. Some are captured in the wild, such as these 45s from a used record store in Brussels, and the yardstick from Jamba's Junktiques. Others were captured in pencil and ink in the pages of my homemade sketchbook.

 


Today I am inspired by numerals, the many textures and colors of grey metal, perfect squares, love lists, and by my mitten-clad faerie muses. How about you?

Flying Hen Studio Caps!

Welcome to The Flying Hen Studio!

Here are some details of the current cap collection and a few words about my methods and motivations for making them. These caps are meant for everyday wear. A cap is your signature, the last thing to put on before leaving the house and a defining feature of your street silhouette. Nevertheless, a cap should be completely practical: weather-wise and comfortable, just the thing to help you out the door into your day. Versatility, function, and easy care are the signatures of Flying Hen Studio style. 

My goals in designing and redesigning these caps over the last 5 years are simple:

1. To create a closer and closer approximation of 'the perfect cap' for the indoor and outdoor everyday wear of folks in my community, that is to say: people whose daily lives include exposure to changes in the weather; multiple work tasks such as retail, restaurant, childcare, agriculture and academia; various modes of transportation (i.e. these should fit smoothly under bike helmets); and usually include social and or artistic events for which one would need something snappy, as well.

2. I make every possible effort to streamline the production process so that I may both pay myself a livable wage for my work and offer them at an affordable price. Outside of my work in the Flying Hen Studio, I work as a nursing assistant, student, and mother of two: every moment counts! Simplicity in design and production helps me maintain the fine balance between compensating myself for my work and keeping the price affordable to my comrades.

3. I work to provide alternatives to sweatshop capitalism in my small atelier by paying myself a livable wage, by participating in my local economy, and by using primarily free, found, thrifted and recycled materials. There is plenty of good cloth available from secondhand and local sources for all of our needs. Truly.

I hope you enjoy these pictures of my work taken by Michael Sundue, aka DJ +5 of the Flying Hen Studio soundlab. To see the work in person or make a purchase, please visit The Bobbin in our beloved Old North End neighborhood of Burlington, Vermont.

O.N.E. love!

Your local cap designer,

Rebecca Mack aka DJ Mothertrucker

When two shirts become one...

I do love the Slow Design process of envisioning, sketching, planning, pattern drafting, deconstructing and recycling materials,and finally realizing the design in its unique and given circumstance.  Equally am I drawn to, and frequently fall into, a more fluid squishing of elements on hand; projects whose genesis is the extra cup of coffee, whose realization is fated by a moment's contents of the studio, and worn home just in time to make lunch for small boys.

This garment is of the latter tribe, the Frankengarment. Pieces synthesized for their own good. The most-of-a-western blouse was in a lucky pile I received from Paper Moon Project as she packed for her return to Los Angeles. Into it I gathered a strip of Heather Ross bicycle print fabric and much of a cotton gauze shirt, once upon a time worn for fieldwork by my vegetable-farming husband.

I'm digging it

Thanks to Pure Pop Records and yesterday's celebration of National Record Store Day I have fresh, smooth, new vinyl bumping in the studio. All praises due to Erykah Badu; an unstoppable force in American music herstory.

Cap of the Day!

Forsythia yellow, reverses to a grassy green brocade: Today's special at The Bobbin. $45!

Flying Hen celebration flags

My Second-Favorite Holiday

There are lots of reasons not to celebrate or support the practice of celebrating Valentine's Day. From it's deep roots in European patriarchy to it's current capitalistic expressions, it is full of flaws. But, so am I, and I just love an excuse to spread to love of craft! Round about mid-February, we Northerners need a little excuse to light candles and set gluesticks to scrap paper in the name of Love!

Halloween is the ultimate crafter's delight because the social expectations are low and there is as much room for costume, theater, and creativity as one cares to assume.  Valentine's Day is my second favorite, because it's social weight is light enough to leave folks with room to play around; a perfect excuse to open the studio stash of paper scraps for a free-recycling love-in! We invited a few souls over to open the suitcases of fiber mystery; gave them scissors, glue, envelopes, and stamps.

Of course I can't show any of the missives, but I do encourage everyone to take this late winter opportunity to light the candles, pour the wine, and mix the magic of collage with postal service in celebration of our human predicament!

"Living the Dream"!

First week of going back to school as a mama has had its challenges but I'm still on my game. Most of the week, though, the house has looked like this:

Well, it's been really, really cold here in Burlington, VT. So the living room is also the playground for most of the day! New schedules confuse me until I absorb them. Here's a confused me in the studio trying to decide whether to exercise or finish sewing the three caps in various stages of production on the worktable:

Since last Tuesday, which was the first day of the semester and hence the beginning of my new life, I have managed to:

1. Read and complete all homework.

2. Not contract any new viruses (I'm knocking on wood right now).

3. Sew a new set of lacy party flags.

4. Not sew at all on the caps on my worktable.

5. 1.5 hrs of yoga

6. Go to work a couple times.

7. Send a postcard in the mail.

8. Made a batch of truffles with cacao nibs on top.

9. Lose my school folder containing everything EXCEPT my homework (really hoping to find that any minute).

10. Bake muffins with my little guys.

11. Make and wrap a birthday gift for my mom. Happy Birthday, Mom!

12. Almost went to a party. at night. without the kids. but then I really just wanted to snuggle them like I always do and fall asleep.

These are snapshots; to tell the truth, I can't remember most of the week. I feel tired but happy to be, as my friend Rachel says about life as a mama-worker-student-artist, "Living the Dream"!

1 minute slideshow: "Mothertrucker's Favorite Machines"

Here's the first installment of an audio-visual project I began years ago and envisioned as a book, with a companion record, like we 30-somethings had when we were kids. I still hope to press and print the project someday. Meanwhile, I realized that the blog is a perfect format for sharing my work in progress. Enjoy, and please, comment!

"My Wife's Chirping Polka"

See and hear Frankie Yankovic's "My Wife's Chirping Polka" in Superman sound, right here in the Flying Hen Studio. Often referred to as the King of American Polka, he is of no relation to Weird Al.

 

Old School Sesame Street

Record: "Sing The Hit Songs of Sesame Street", pressed in the USA in 1974. Best track? "I Love Trash"! (and oh, how we do!)

Inside, Out

Wow! It's 4 above zero and w-i-n-d-y here in Burlington. I'm uploading MP3s of mixtapes past as Classic Hits and I prepare to record the next one. Here are some pictures from inside and outside the studio.

corduroy jacket

I have wanted a jacket like this for a long time. Long enough to justify the long time I spent making it! It may be the most complicated thing I've ever sewn; certainly more difficult than my wedding dress.

It was an adventure in topstitching and buttonholes. Actually the adventure began in the church basement thrift stores, finding pants in a blue-green palette to cut up.


I chose the pattern for the pocket depth. I need to carry around a small notebook most of the time, as well as the obvious necessities: wallet, keys, crackers.


Now I have just enough leftover pieces of reclaimed corduroy to launch the spring line of Flying Hen caps. No custom orders this time... just have to wait and see! Caps will be available May 4 with one exception: the first in the series is a child's blue cap which will be auctioned to benefit the Fools Gold Artists' Fund. The auction is from 6 to 9pm on April 1 at 216 Battery Street, preceding the Pink and Blue Ball.

Gallery open 12 to 6 tommorrow

The Flying Hen Stairway Gallery will be open from 12 to 6 pm tommorrow, Saturday July 28 for the Ramble. Please stop by if you're in the hood. Above is the building's facade; gallery door is located off the driveway.

This photo is a note from my desk. The chevron stripes are a sleeve hem from a sweater nearly finished. Sewing the components together may have to wait until I finished reading a certain giant book just released last weekend (shhh! say nothing!). Corrugated cardboard barn swallows are left over from preparing a stencil for the community graffiti project at Kriya Studio. If the babies' teeth allow, I just might get to paint it, insha'allah!

paper mobile finished

The paper mobile project is finished! One is in the mail to Boston and the other is hanging over the kitchen crib, to help out when watching Mothertrucker cook isn't quite interesting enough...

The mobiles inspired me to share some other images of lovely things hanging in the studio, including this amalgamation:
and this piece of fabric which I knit from strips of torn cotton shirts.
A final photo for today's post:

This is my main work surface looking,as it often does, cluttered with projects in various stages of completion and chaos.