0:03

all right we are live and we already have five guests which is amazing uh so hello everyone and welcome thank

0:10

you for joining us hi mj hi thank you for being here today um so my name’s

0:18

sophia i’ll be behind the scenes today um as our wonderful amazing and talented

0:23

guest mj uh takes us through her program called core tributions um this program is made

0:30

possible in part through heart and soul fund by epcor uh to learn more about their uh heart and soul fund

0:37

visit uh epcor dot com slash heart and soul fund um so i’m just gonna share a little bit

0:44

about mj um and then i’ll run into some housekeeping and most recently served as indigenous

0:50

art consultant for fort edmonton park an indigenous curator for the edmonton public library

0:56

in 2019 mj served as an indigenous artist in residency and always has about five million things

1:03

on the go um it’s uh it’s i i get to work with her in other places um other than this building

1:10

which we are both in so mj is in the borealis room at the art gallery and i am in one of the offices just so

1:17

that we can keep each other safe and go maskless um a few housekeeping

1:22

notes uh so if you are noticing things are getting a little bit fuzzy uh hit that reconnect button at

1:29

the button at the top of your screen and that’ll just uh refresh everything right into back into this room uh there’s also a

1:36

chat function so i feel free to ask any questions if i don’t know the answer and i think

1:41

it’s i would love to know the answer we might pop in and ask mj and if not uh we can follow up with you

1:48

afterwards we’ll download the chat and make sure we get uh get those questions answered um as well this is if you can’t join us

1:56

live today um don’t worry uh we will be uploading this to our youtube channel

2:01

so the art gallery of alberta has a youtube channel and all of our past live aga or aj lives are on there

2:08

um as well all of our upcoming ones uh including this one uh so make sure you do check that out

2:15

but that’s enough of me talking because it’s quite as you can see with all of the amazing items on the table

2:21

she’s got a lot to cover um so please mj take it away and i look i so look forward to learning episode traditions

2:29

awesome well thank you so much and thank you for that introduction um it is a busy time i’m i’m very

2:35

involved with all kinds of things but um it is a passion and i love it and it’s it’s a wonderful

2:41

time to to be alive um although we’re struggling a little bit

2:46

we do have to deal with covid and keeping ourselves safe so please do i

2:52

hope that um you can sort of follow along with what i’m doing and again if there’s questions

2:57

please feel free to ask me anything you’ve mentioned i am mixed heritage i am

3:02

cree mohawk and french that’s my metis mix uh my family is from laxai nan and the

3:09

michelle band so that’s um my roots i i wasn’t raised out there i was raised all over alberta

3:15

but um but this is home i was born here uh definitely my home and native land

3:21

uh you could say so um one of the the wonderful techniques that i was able

3:28

to learn is and please correct me for those kree speakers out there

3:34

to make sure that i have that right for the next time but the porcupine was uh an animal that

3:41

wasn’t fast moving so it was easy to capture they made a succulent meal and then all

3:47

the quills were used as adornment and decoration so um it’s it’s part of the rodent family

3:54

it’s uh it’s the second largest rodent actually um first would be the porcupine that’s

3:59

the largest and it habits uh woodlands uh mostly woodland area in canada

4:05

and it’s primarily a nocturnal animal you’ll find it climbing and resting in a

4:12

tree branch during the day or under and under a boro

4:19

and it’s uh i’m just so sorry i lost my spot here [Music]

4:26

um yeah and also sorry um the

4:33

porcupine quills were also there were some suggestions that the quills themselves were part of a

4:39

trade so it was um used as served as a medium of exchange uh during pre-contact and

4:48

and with indigenous trade and so those people who don’t have the porcupine in their neck of the

4:55

woods so to speak that they were able to trade for them the porcupine actually an

5:00

adult sized porcupine will average between 30 and 40 000 quilts but there’s um all kinds of

5:07

sizes all over the body um on the tail quills you’ll get these really heavy

5:13

ones i’m not sure where to go here for this there’s something i don’t know if you can see that but they’re

5:18

quite large those are quite heavy and those are towards the tail end of the the animal um whereas these ones are

5:25

quite fine and these are more um closer to the belly side belly

5:30

uh quills so and then they range from the belly to the back they get a

5:35

little thicker as they go around the body and the ones that i like to use are the

5:41

side quills sometimes the the um depending on what i’m doing actually too

5:46

but i do like the side curls mostly sometimes closer to the belly but when you get right into the center

5:52

of the animal there really isn’t uh any quills there’s it’s there’s hair and cools actually are

5:58

a type of hair it’s an extension it just becomes hard because they’re they grow with the barbs on the end that

6:04

is their protection they don’t uh shoot the quills like some people believe that’s an old wise tale

6:10

um but the they will swish their tail um in defense and they they kind of

6:16

stand up their quills like hackles i guess and that is their protection so anything

6:22

that touches them will get jabbed and poked and they do hurt and they’re not very nice anyone who’s had a

6:27

dog that’s chased them and and bit that your these quill earrings i made these are

6:33

more like a back quill they’re not as heavy as these ones but um though it was easier

6:39

quillwork still survived it almost died out you could in some ways it sorted for size and then

6:46

died vegetable dyes natural dyes roots were used bark was used but they always used a

6:53

mordant to secure them the color to make the color stay

6:58

and often that was an acidic type of a medium in fact some some peoples

7:06

would collect urine from children so so that they could use that to set the dye in the quills

7:15

but anything acidic vinegar works that’s what i’ve used before in with my classes

7:24

that i’ve been teaching so some of the tools that were used

7:30

a long time ago would have been sinew for sewing them down a bone a bone

7:36

flattener to flatten the quills a knife was used to cut the quills

7:43

i don’t have my knife with me but i do have these handy dandy little scissors i really like them they’re nice little

7:49

shears or snips they work really well and i have also another little pair but i do

7:56

also use an exacto blade and that’s also helpful in some with for some um some

8:03

[Music] instances where you need to cut the quilt from the hide

8:09

um it’s best to work on natural smoked hide um smoked hide is um

8:17

is a like a thick flannel when it’s done so you can sort of see the thickness in it um that

8:26

i’m not sure where that is exactly if you can see that but it’s quite thick so you can actually sew

8:31

kind of in between the the layer so that you can hide all your stitches and you don’t have

8:37

anything in the back so this one is i have my thread showing but there’s no

8:42

just because i had to put my my um needles in the back just to get them out

8:47

of the way but there’s no loose ends no loose threads because i was able to go into the hide and tie the

8:53

knot and hide that thread inside the hide itself so i’m using moose height here

9:01

and when i begin i always charred off my design i grafted out

9:07

and this is what i’ve come up with it’s my own design but it’s um kind of just reflective i think a little

9:13

bit of of my my cultural heritage and and so then i found this stuff you might want to try

9:20

and see if you can find this yourself and see if you like it some people don’t really care for it but i’m trying it out it’s not too bad

9:26

it’s a thin film where it it um it’s actually water soluble which is kind of

9:31

neat it works really great for beadwork as well so i’ve traced my design on it

9:36

and then gently sort of stores and it is a permanent pen it’s got a very fine tip i

9:44

can draw a line i don’t get run too thickly into the height because you don’t want them to blob onto the so i brought one of my

9:53

um quill pieces to show you and this is cool sewing and

10:00

you can see that without the reflection i love these lights by the way i have some color in my face today from

10:07

the lights that’s awesome but this is an example and kind of a

10:12

sampling of different styles of quill work and there is a zigzag stitch which is in

10:20

the center of the little buds there and i don’t know if that’s where you can

10:25

see it the best but um and that’s kind of the easier stitch to learn the zigzag stitch

10:32

is one of the first ones you would learn if you want to practice practice using ribbon that’s what i

10:37

get the fine ribbon that works really well or somebody told me that they tried it with um

10:42

with straws that they just cut the straws because it’s thin and flat and then they can fold it so you can try

10:49

that too if you’d like the other stitches that are here are the line stitch that’s these little blue

10:55

swirls here and then there’s another stitch called the zigzag or sawtooth stitch and that’s kind of fun as well so i was

11:01

going to work on the line stitch that i have here on my piece that i started

11:08

but because my quill has been sitting a little bit longer it dried out i have to moisten it and

11:14

you have to keep them moist um and so i have my little bowl of water

11:21

with my quills in it and um and so that they’ve been soaking for a

11:27

little while warm lukewarm water is good you don’t really want to have hot water because they’ll soften too fast

11:33

and then if the quill itself actually isn’t hollow um as some people

11:40

believe that it is it’s not hollow it has like this little foamy core to it and if you let it soak too

11:47

long you’ll squish all that core out uh that foamy core i’m not sure what it’s called

11:53

scientifically but it um if it does come out it um it won’t your quill won’t flatten

12:01

because it needs that um that foam to flatten and stick to itself so that

12:07

you can manipulate the quill and and bend it and fold it if like i said if you if you leave it in

12:14

the water too long it will squish out and and then it just has a hollow tube that just

12:19

wants to stay um kind of open and that doesn’t it’s um it doesn’t

12:27

work very well anyways so these are not too too bad but what might have to do

12:33

is excuse me here but i’m gonna have to put this in my mouth and a long time ago

12:40

elders and and those that did quill work did put the quilt in them their mouths

12:46

to soften it i don’t really recommend that if you’re going to be dying your quills different colors with writ clothing dye

12:55

i don’t think it’s really healthy for you to have that in your mouth plus you have to be careful that the

13:00

quill isn’t pointing the wrong direction so that you would not want to get that stuck in your mouth at all

13:07

and it is really awful if if that happens i actually did that one

13:12

time i was in a hurry and i i kind of coughed or something and i had to cool on the side of my mouth but it

13:18

kind of got stuck it was just awful it’s a terrible experience so please

13:23

don’t do that if you’re some older ones will if they’ve done cool work for a long

13:30

long time then they’re very efficient and they can manage that coil but i prefer

13:36

not to myself but they did actually would pull the quill out of their mouth and flatten it

13:41

between their teeth and that’s something that also is interesting and they say that saliva is better than soaking it in water

13:48

but um you can try but just be very cautious you don’t want to get that

13:53

stuck in your your mouth that’s it’s not pleasant believe me trust me so um so a few other things though

14:02

with um with the quills and and the stories behind the quill work

14:08

there’s a an ancient uh or sorry there’s well and it’s it’s an ancient art form

14:14

and um the blackfoot believed that it was the thunder spirit that gave the first

14:20

um porcupines to the answers as we taught them how to do quill work um i always find it really interesting

14:27

to to hear those stories or to learn about the origins of things and and how it was uh

14:34

given to the people among the siouxs who were really well known for their quill work um there’s a legend of a

14:41

young woman who was taught in her dream how to do porcupine pool work and how to work with

14:46

them and then when she woke up she turned around and talked this to two others

14:52

there’s also another sue story that talks about an old an old woman who who continuously

14:58

does quill work and she has her dog that lays beside her as she does her quilling and then when she falls asleep her dog

15:07

um chews up her or tears up her quill work and she has to start over and so this is a

15:13

continuous thing and it’s ongoing but they say that and the belief is that if she actually were to finish

15:18

her quill work that it would signify the end of the world so um so that i think is a an interesting

15:26

uh story uh a relief that as um maybe it’s prompting us to

15:33

keep keep this work going and not to stop and to and to not let it die out completely because we want to we

15:39

want to be able to keep this this incredible

15:45

art form alive so i’m going to actually close that because i don’t think i need that

15:51

anymore it’s distracting anyway so um but i’m gonna actually move this over so

15:58

that i can pull the stuff around here and you can see

16:04

my work a little bit clearer and closer i’ll move this here so that these are

16:10

out of the way i’m going to be working on the green one like i said i’m going to be doing the um

16:18

the lined work here so and as i mentioned i’m not going to be using sinew i have

16:24

in the past used a little bit but it’s a little tricky to to make a sinew thread um i have my

16:31

late elder elsie quintel from square lake up class lacla bish actually

16:37

taught me how once these are dry you take little strips you rub it in your mouth the the sinew and then you roll it uh on

16:45

your head on your leg or whatever is comfortable to to make a twist and to create the

16:52

sinew a long time ago they would use alls i don’t have a bone all but i have a

16:57

little metal all that has a little piece of antler on the on the end of it and these would go into the hide it

17:03

would poke a hole into the hide and then the sinew um you could twist

17:09

this in your two and make a a point at the at the end like at

17:14

the tip of it and let it dry and then it becomes firm and solid again and then once you poke the hole in the

17:21

hide then you would thread the sinew in without a needle you don’t need a needle because it’s

17:26

it’s that stiff and very very strong sinew is incredibly strong um the elder elsie

17:34

late elder elsie quintel actually still um she beaded regularly and she still

17:40

used sinew to do the outside edge of her of her designs always with sinew because

17:48

it’s just really strong and and you don’t have to worry about it rubbing and

17:53

the thread breaking at all so but if you know any hunters you can get the

17:59

tendons from the backbone and you want to try it you can there’s a casing on the outside

18:05

i actually have a piece here so you can peel that off you can do it while it’s wet or you can wait till it’s dry and

18:12

you can give your give it a try if you want to um or call me if you need me to if you’re

18:17

trying it out to see how it works that that work that’s okay to uh or message me so um

18:25

but so some of the things that i have practiced with and used i have used beading thread and this is

18:31

just a nylon beading thread you have to wax it up really really well if you’re going to

18:37

use the the nylon thread because it is strong um but

18:44

without the the wax on it it’s too slippery um it doesn’t hold the

18:49

stitch in place and that’s what you want it to do it kind of mimics sinew in a sense because of the wax on it and

18:56

and it is fairly strong um i i like it in some ways it does

19:03

it does stitch pretty good but it can actually tear your your quill so you have to sort of

19:10

be careful with it too because if you pull too tight it actually can break your quill so you have to just be careful

19:17

i also started using um like a cotton thread this is a nice heavy cotton

19:22

thread but again i waxed it up really really well when i’m going to use it and

19:29

i can just show you quickly here i think with one of these

19:39

so when i do my waxing i take i take um i like to have a comfortable amount of thread

19:45

about a wingspan that’s what i call it a wingspan of thread that’s that’s plenty you can go a little

19:50

bit more but if you have too much then it’s it makes it kind of awkward because you’re pulling and pulling all the

19:56

thread and it it’ll start to fray on you and it’ll it’ll get all bunched up and you it’s better just to take just enough

20:02

that’s comfortable to use at one time this is beeswax i bought this

20:08

a chunk of beeswax a brick of it from the farmer’s market and i melted it down and i just put it in ice cube trays

20:14

and made myself some beeswax so that i can carry it around and i give

20:20

them to to friends who are learning cool work and or beadwork but you have to wax it up

20:27

pretty good i like to rub it through at least three or four times so that it gets a good coating on there

20:34

and that’s what you want it to do so just pull it through the wax and the wax

20:42

takes the tangle out of the thread it preserves the thread because it coats it it makes the stitch stay in place

20:49

it’s really actually um something really valuable and i always recommend it don’t

20:54

don’t forget your wax always wax your thread it’s really important and then when i thread my needle i

21:01

always pinch it between my fingers and i place the uh the the needle onto

21:07

the the thread it’s a little easier it always seems to work out

21:13

because you’re squeezing it flat and you’re just opening it enough to go through the eye of the needle and

21:19

it seems to work pretty good usually there you go so it’s it does

21:26

seem to work a little bit better than trying to poke the thread through you know because that’s a flexible you

21:31

know it’s it’s wiggly and it’s harder to um to put into the eye of the needle so that’s

21:38

what i found and uh give it a try see if that works for you

21:43

there’s my i’m gonna to just do this single thread this is a fairly heavy heavy thread so i’m not gonna double

21:50

this um if you feel that you need to i want to you can double it with if you have a thinner thread but i wouldn’t

21:55

recommend it you would you don’t have to uh single thread seems to work good with the nylon and with this cotton

22:01

thread that i’m trying out and i i do like it i’m going to put this one over here because i already have that one started here

22:09

and so i actually put on this one just so that it um

22:16

to kind of um get the process going here i have a knot and a tail end at the back

22:23

side of the of my leather and my hide and i like to leave a long tail end with

22:29

one little knot it doesn’t have to be double knotted because you’re going to go back into the the leather right close the knot and

22:34

pull the knot inside and hide your knot and then you can actually go back and forth with the

22:40

with your needle to hide that thread and it actually secures it

22:45

so that’s why i’ve left the long tail end at the back and that’s what i’m going to do so i’m going to have to put this in my mouth

22:51

for just a minute here so i’m sorry about that um i should have softened it earlier

22:57

[Music] hopefully this won’t take too long to soften it

23:03

and you can see what i’m doing i just got the quill in my mouth i normally don’t do this because it is like i said it’s

23:09

got it’s written clothing dye um i don’t use the natural dyes because it’s a big process to go and collect and

23:16

harvest all your natural ingredients um to do the dyeing process

23:22

so i find it easier to just use writ clothing dye and it does have nice brilliant colors

23:28

nice and vibrant colors that i like um i have been trying to

23:33

source out somebody told me that there was some online you can find natural dyes that

23:39

somebody actually is creating so um give them a try i think um i haven’t myself yet but i i do

23:47

i do want to but i think it would uh be a nice um a nice change to the the

23:54

colors of the of the quills when they’re finished i’m gonna just try and soften this a little bit more

24:02

and um if there’s any questions at this point please let me ask those

24:09

questions while i’m i’m trying to soften this this uh in my mouth

24:18

it’d be nice to know if there’s other quill workers out there uh working on on quills

24:25

and um where i usually harvest my quills is is roadkill i usually have a lot of

24:30

friends that will call me after they they pass a porcupine on the road and they always call me and

24:37

i love that they think of me when it comes to road kills so um but i’ll get a call you know it

24:44

you know once a year at least that you know somebody’s found a a porcupine on the side of the road and they tell me about it and

24:51

where to go and how to find it so um [Music] yeah so that’s that’s where i find my

24:56

calls you can um actually take quills off of uh live animals with a blanket um which which

25:04

works but you’re not gonna be there’s no selection then because you’re just gonna get me more or less the back quills uh maybe

25:11

the tail coils as well hi i’m jay we do have one question

25:18

we have a question from elaine uh they write what size needle is recommended

25:23

well i use a sharp um these ones uh these are a number 10. they’re

25:30

they’re not too bad the eye is a little bit small so you might want to find a sharp that has a larger eye just so that

25:36

it’s easier to thread these aren’t too bad but um they’re good with the nylon thread but not so good with the

25:42

the cotton thread that i’m using so just a regular sharp um size 10 works with a nice eye

25:49

those are good i like those ones they seem to work pretty good good question because i forgot that one

25:57

it’s starting to soften

26:03

it’s getting there okay and see if that works so i’m i’m not sure which camera to use

26:09

so that i can show you my the stitch that i’m going to be doing so this

26:14

is an interesting stitch that you it’s kind of a back stitch but you have to wrap around the quill

26:21

so for this line stitch what you’re doing is you’re going around the quill sort of

26:28

once and then kind of again just sort of halfway so it looks like i don’t know if you can

26:34

see that it’s kind of tiny and then you’re going to take a stitch

26:40

oops see that’s what happens it comes off

26:48

and the stitches just like it’s kind of a

26:57

back stitch yeah this is just a little awkward sorry

27:03

about that and i just want to i’ll get one going here and then and then hopefully i can

27:08

i don’t know which camera to use to get close

27:14

and then what happens is once because you’re pulling it it has this little twist in it in a

27:20

sense it pulls the coil down and sort of ties the hides the thread it might be hard to see

27:27

because it is pretty tiny but i’ll go i’ll do a few more

27:32

so oh i wanted to show you my a few books i i love to find books on on

27:39

um on co-work i couldn’t bring all of my my library

27:44

here because it would have been pretty heavy so i i only brought a couple but i

27:50

really do recommend i’ll show you them

27:56

i recommend this one i think they sell this one at halford hyde and it is pretty good because it’s a

28:01

cooler companion it’s called and it’s really good with the illustrations

28:06

so i’ll actually just show you the one that i’m working on here see if that helps maybe it’ll it’ll help a little bit but so this is a

28:13

single thread line technique and it gives a really great illustration of how to do it so it’s

28:19

pretty clear in the instructions and that’s what’s really nice about this book so when i was

28:24

working at the college we we were able to get books for everybody to use

28:30

and this is the one that that we use and it’s um eagles

28:37

eagles view publishing if that helps at all but i do believe they sell them at um

28:42

halford hyde the other one that i really like because it kind of gives a nice brief overview

28:49

of the history of the cool work and this is this is from the glenbaum museum and it is uh cool works of the plane so

28:55

it’s a really nice book there’s all kinds of different cool work the one that i really wanted to show you

29:02

is the quill plating it’s called and it’s usually done on on

29:08

pipe stems this is a close-up shot here of it it’s just beautiful so it wasn’t sewn

29:14

down onto the the pipe stem but it actually was wrapped around it it was it’s kind of like a braiding

29:20

almost uh to do this one so camera camera angle

29:26

this is really different anyway so yeah this is this is really great just so you can see those close-up shots and

29:32

it’s it’s really awesome that way um there’s so many different styles of cool work um

29:38

there’s the sewn the weaving the wrapping and plating those are the four main um

29:44

types of of cool work and so this one here is

29:49

this is a beautiful bag this is uh to cover them i believe it’s um yeah cradle board

29:55

cover is what it is but it’s quite lovely this is all a band stitch this is a tricky one this is a

30:01

harder stitch to learn um but it’s it is just amazing when you when you actually complete it on the

30:08

bottom of this bag here this is called wrapping so it’s wrapping on rawhide you can also

30:14

wrap um leather like leather thongs that’s this one here so there’s one that’s all wrapped this

30:20

is also wrapped here with just a quills all along on top of it as well

30:26

so um before i said again where there’s cool plating wrapping sewing and weaving and

30:33

so this is just sewing this is a line stitch as i said and maybe

30:40

i don’t know if i could if it’s possible but um i and maybe there’s a screenshot

30:47

we can take of this afterwards and put it on so that you can see that the illustration but i mean the books

30:55

aren’t too expensive you could always go to like i said go pick one up at harford height if you’re in the city

31:00

um and it is great for the illustrations so but perhaps i can um

31:08

i can get i can get um sophia to help me and we can maybe print this or post it also with when

31:14

we’re complete for today and then you can have that with yourself or take that with you as well anyways so

31:21

let’s get back to it and it’s probably dried a little bit so i’m gonna have to do this again sorry um

31:32

and that’s the tricky part about doing quills you have to be steady with it because you have to keep them moist enough so that um it’s

31:39

not gonna work too much um to keep them flexible is what you want

31:46

because they do soften up enough so that you can flatten them with the line stitch i don’t usually i

31:52

do cut off the tip though but i don’t flatten them because you want to keep that little bit of um

32:03

keep the um a little bump in it because it oops there we go it’ll kind of raises

32:11

that stitch as you’re going so it has a little bit of a hump to it i guess you could see okay

32:20

so again you’re just going to go around the quill

32:26

it’s kind of like once in a half around so it’s not completely

32:33

and and then you just make a little tiny stitch beside it

32:41

and in front of this stitch so halfway past the other stitch i hope that makes

32:54

sense and that happens sometimes where it kind

33:01

of gets stuck but you can pull it forward and you can see it as it tucks itself in it

33:06

might be really hard to see from where you are because it’s really really quite tiny here but you’ll know

33:12

you know what i mean when i when i’m when you if you try it i give it a try

33:18

uh like i said i’m available if somebody is trying it out and and they want to um to give it a try

33:25

and they’re stuck on something then yeah please feel free to message me and maybe we can put that

33:32

at the end of the video as well so that you can also contact me if you’re if

33:38

you’re stuck if you’re giving it a try and it’s it’s tricky because there’s a lot to it um

33:46

i seem like i’m going too many here there we go okay

33:54

yeah it’s um now i have to splice in so these ones will be better because this one’s a little stiff and i’m not really

33:59

happy i’m gonna have to actually take it out and redo it but that’s okay i’ll do it at home so i won’t uh i won’t do that here with

34:08

you but when you’re going to stitch splice another one in and you just go along with your

34:13

stitching so when you cut your quilt when you take

34:19

your quill after it’s softened have a piece of paper towel and

34:24

jab it into the into the into the paper towel you can use an x-acto blade or i just

34:31

use my little snips here and i just cut it off and leave the the barbed end into the paper towel that way it’s

34:37

not going to fly off and fall on the floor and get stuck in somebody’s foot or something like that because that you wouldn’t want that to happen because

34:44

that would be pretty painful to get that little barbed end in your in your skin so now

34:52

with this one that i’m ready to use i usually use i usually put it in with the tail end in

34:58

the root side of it and just kind of put it in alongside i’m going to pull it

35:03

tight tightly down excuse me excuse me there’s my water sorry

35:11

just need a little ass sorry about that a little shot

35:22

okay so getting back to it here

35:27

so i just spliced in a quill and i’m going to go around it again and do the stitch one more time

35:35

and i did a few forward stitches to try to sort to help that quill along

35:40

but it didn’t work so like i said i’m going to have to take it apart when i get home but that’s okay

35:47

this is a backstitch and then you have to be careful that it’s not too twisted up and

35:55

and then you’ll pull it in and that little tail end will stick out i’ll do a few more stitches and then

36:01

i’ll tell you i’ll show you how you trim them off okay because you have to do that so kind

36:06

of once and a half go around it’s a little tiny back stitch

36:17

and then

36:23

and you just have to be careful that your your your stitches don’t get too um there we go

36:32

too tangled you just have to wash it that’s all

36:37

okay one more time one more stitch then i’ll show you how to trim those those quills okay uh mj we just have a

36:45

question from the audience as well um of the four techniques which is the most

36:51

difficult to learn um

36:57

it kind of depends uh i’d say that the most difficult probably

37:03

is weaving weaving is either on a loom or just on

37:08

on on the garment itself if you’re going or the or whatever

37:14

you’re making um because you’re using multiple quills and and so it’s a little trickier if

37:20

you’re doing a looming the loomed quill work is tricky because

37:25

you have to have your quilts go through all the the warp threads the weft threads go across so

37:34

the warp threads are along um that hold the better sort of the stabilizer of the quills

37:40

and you have to put um so if you have four or five quills however many wide

37:48

you’re having then you you put your stitch across the quills have to bend over top of that stitch

37:53

then you you tighten it up really really tight then you um put another little

37:59

stitch across then the coils come up and then they go down back and forth like that but then you have to splice in and that’s what’s the

38:05

tricky part is splicing in because they’re only so so long that’s probably the the hardest

38:11

one to learn um cool wrapping is probably the easiest

38:16

one to learn because you’re just manipulating the quill you’re flattening it and you’re wrapping it around

38:22

and it’s just a little tiny way that you twist it around the other quill so that you can keep

38:27

wrapping and so that one’s a fairly easy one to learn and then and then i guess the the sewing

38:34

the plating isn’t too difficult uh you do that on a little loom as well just using two threads so

38:40

that’s probably easier too cool wrapping and plating are fairly easy and then like the quilt sewing because

38:46

there’s different styles of sewing um they’re a little tricky because you have to learn

38:54

all those multiple stitches as i had on my sampler and but but

39:00

like i said again it’s it is really therapeutic it really focuses you it keeps you calm because you have to be

39:06

really precise with with each stitch okay let me just finish this one sorry about that and see

39:12

i can get this here and and uh show you how to trim the

39:20

the loose ones okay there we go okay so that’s way better that’s a lot

39:26

better okay i’ll do one more

39:34

and i don’t mind this thread it does seem to

39:39

want to tangle a little bit so i might go with a shorter a shorter

39:45

amount of thread to work with i it’s not too bad and see it’s come off my quill

39:53

i can’t submit that okay got it

39:59

okay nope not quite

40:04

there we go okay not too bad those are better than the

40:11

last one but that my cool was dry so it wasn’t working quite right so now if you’re once you’re finished

40:17

you want to take your exact weight this is when you actually need a really nice little exacto blade and what you do is is you’re going to

40:26

take the end of that quill the little root end or the little pieces that are

40:32

stuck out and you grab it and you pull it up against you don’t don’t cut into the hide or cut

40:37

into the coil you just pull the coil off into the into the um

40:43

into the blade i hope that makes sense so there’s another one here so you grab it and you pull it up to the

40:51

against the blade and that’s how you get rid of all those little loose ends there’s another one here it’s probably

40:57

going to leave them and go back to them so that’s all you do

41:03

and that’s pretty much it for the line stitch and that’s um that one i like the line

41:09

stitch i like how it um you can go around the edges of something i wanted to show you there is another photograph in

41:17

here that does show that and i really like it

41:24

if i can find it i thought it

41:29

oh here’s the quill the cool um this is what i mean about it’s black and white but you can see the quill loomed work

41:36

so each of these little folds here that’s a quill that’s been folded

41:41

and you can see it on on the loom itself this is a really good illustrated book it has some nice photos

41:47

and close-ups i like that here so i i recommend it if you can find something that has really great pictures

41:53

it gives you some better idea but there was another one here i wanted to show you that was also a close-up

42:00

of the um the line stitch with the zigzagger oh there it is

42:06

yeah oh it didn’t show that oh i thought it was anyways this is a zigzag in a floral design a lot of the quills that are found um

42:14

the the real old ones um a lot of geometrical designs but um then they they with more time

42:22

that came along this is a tea cozy oops there’s my fingers this is a tea cozy

42:27

right here um and so it’s um it doesn’t say who

42:32

made it uh but there was you know as time on it oh it says a cree cream 18.

42:38

and so you can see a lot of criminal designs in this in this illustration here but beautiful

42:46

beautiful works i thought i had another one here i wanted to show you that line stitch must have been in my other book

42:52

because i have a few of them and uh yeah no not in here i thought it

42:58

was yeah but um yeah

43:04

i think we’re we’re probably getting close to that time so if there’s any questions or any other

43:12

questions please please feel free what time is it now it’s we still got about 10 minutes that’s not

43:18

too bad so um yeah i can probably finish this one but i think i’m going to take it apart

43:23

anyways because and that’s the thing too is like you get a little bit fussy because you want it to be just right and so you want all the

43:30

stitches to be all the same and so i i tend to be a little fussy i’m going to have to backtrack this one here

43:35

and the the last one and uh so that i can do this design and one day i will complete this and

43:43

it’ll be a bag so that’s uh that’s the idea with this one here but they were i mean pull work was used to embellish

43:51

all kinds of things clothing of course moccasins bags of all kinds so it just

43:59

depends on what you wanted to put on but i really do highly recommend using smoked hide if you can get some

44:07

if you can make it that’s even better i forgot to show you my leather thimble

44:12

this one i do like it’s really nice actually i bought this not too too long ago but it’s um you could probably make one too

44:19

but it was handy i went and grabbed it because it’s just a nice little leather thimble and it’s perfect for doing cool work because

44:24

you’re not going through really heavy or surf using you’re usually passing the needle through the surface of the hide

44:29

so you don’t need a heavy duty one i have another one that’s a leather

44:34

thimble that has a piece of metal here so if i’m going through magazines there’s a couple layers or three layers of hide you you

44:41

want something that you can press pretty good down on and you don’t have to worry about it going

44:47

through the this and jabbing your yourself with the needle so i recommend this too it’s awesome um

44:54

mj we do a question um how long should the quills soak for um you know these are nice and spongy

45:02

now i would probably if i was going to sit here for too long i would probably take them out and i keep them in a bunch because it

45:08

keeps the moist they’re the moist and it keeps them soft for a little bit so you just kind of have to play with it

45:14

you can feel them they kind of feel squishy but not like overly squishy that makes

45:21

sense i’ll actually show you one here this one actually is got some damage to it so it’s soaked up

45:27

on the inside and i’ll show you what i mean when i flatten the quill

45:32

for this stitch that i was doing here for the demo it’s um i don’t have to flatten it but i will

45:38

show you when i flatten the quills what that looks like so this one here

45:44

like i said it’s got some damage so it’s soaked up some water and it’s might not it might even

45:49

break when i when i flatten it so again you always stick it into a paper towel or kleenex or something

45:56

cut that barbed end off and so now i’m going to flatten it i usually flatten it from the

46:01

root end of the the quill to the tip and i have a bone flattener if you don’t have a bone flattener that’s okay you

46:08

can use a spoon or you can use a little i actually got those little um

46:14

chopsticks of some sort from the dollar store at one point and i used that for a little while it’s just a little piece of

46:20

wooden it was flat um and it worked really good actually so but um

46:27

yeah it’s um i’ll just put it over here so you can see it so i don’t know if it’ll come out or not

46:34

but oh yes there’s a little bit of squishy white stuff coming out that’s because it was it’s a damaged quill and i can see that

46:40

it’s not too good so actually it’s not bad it’s holding pretty good

46:45

but that’s all you do um yeah some of the stuffing came out i don’t know what i call that i should

46:50

find out what that the technical term is for the inside of the quill but it is

46:57

like a little foaminess to it so so these aren’t too bad this is pretty good i can show you again

47:05

so if you watch you can just use an exacto blade too and again just lay it on the quill and pull up on the quill so

47:10

you’re not cutting down into anything and the coil barbed end stays up in the in the paper

47:15

towel i’ll just show you quickly here again

47:20

so just flatten the coil out it’s not too bad

47:26

and that’s kind of it i wish i had i don’t i should have

47:32

brought me a little piece of rawhide to show you wrapping uh quickly but um

47:39

but if you can imagine um the quill goes around the hide i mean around the strip

47:45

of rawhide in the back and then when it comes you keep wrapping it around i don’t have

47:52

anything sorry i wasn’t thinking about that

47:57

and then it would actually fold it back down on itself and then this one hooks into it

48:05

on the back side and then it keeps folding you keep folding it around and it’s keeps flattening so

48:15

i don’t think you can see anything like that because it’s kind of mangled looking but that’s the idea of it

48:22

um you kind of see it but uh yeah that’s that’s the cool

48:28

wrapping part so i think that’s about it i think that’s uh um

48:34

it for today i covered most everything um just wanted to make sure that you’ve

48:39

seen a little bit of that cool work and again i just there’s so many different stitches to do so uh it’s

48:45

it’s just good to practice it it just if you want to try they do i think they do sell these that you can

48:50

get little tiny containers of quills if you don’t want to work with a porcupine because it’s it’s quite a

48:56

process you have to what i do is i skin the porcupine out and i tack it to a big board

49:02

and i just kind of let it dry because i don’t always have time to pluck it right away if you can if you can pluck your quills

49:07

off the porcupine right away it’s it’s better but if not i tack it to a board and i let it

49:13

dry and then sometimes i will just shake the board and the cools will come out because they’re dry enough or you just have to

49:20

take your pliers there’s long guard hairs uh that you want to remove and those are

49:25

also used for roaches uh the headdresses they’re those wonderful um headdress roach headdresses

49:34

um but other than that to remove all the those there’s all really fine soft down

49:41

hair amongst the quills as well so you have to sort of work around that you can take the

49:46

clothes out if you’re going to use the pliers and i recommend using a pliers pull in the direction of the hair or the

49:51

quill you don’t want to pull back on it because it cracks and it’ll break it and then you have a damaged quill and then it’s not easy to use so

49:58

but give it a try and like i said um if you’re curious and i probably am planning hopefully to do a

50:05

cool workshop in the spring so uh keep your ears open for that i’ll probably post it on facebook um

50:12

just under my name it’s mj bellcore so um if you want to friend me then i’ll

50:17

post and then if you’re interested at that time come and take my class and then we’ll get a little bit more dirty and

50:24

and have a little more fun and and try out a few more stitches so um yeah so just

50:29

just to let you know mj that was amazing oh my gosh i feel like i learned so much

50:38

from the audience thank you so much mj grateful for the teachings you share truly we are so grateful thank you for

50:44

sharing this with us today um i feel yeah i feel like we can go into the next

50:49

really busy week um i know it’s a crazy time for for especially with yesterday’s news but

50:55

it was so nice to to take a break for a little bit and be able to learn something um that is rooted with such tradition

51:03

um so thank you mj um our gallery of alberta make sure you check out our aj lives

51:09

coming up in the next month um and then thank you to the heart and soul fund from epcor

51:14

hope you have a really great rest of your day everyone and um stay tuned for more on our social media

51:21

thank you mj bye everyone

No results found