Craft, Community, and 5 Minute Presentations

Ignite Craft Boston is an Ignite event with a crafty community. If you had five minutes on stage to talk about your craft you are passionate about, what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Around the world, folks have been putting together Ignite events to show what they’re doing. Attendees get to see a many types of amazing DIY in a short amount of time – for free.

Join Us

Come join the Boston area crafting community for the 3rd annual Ignite Craft Boston:

• Friday, January 11th
• 32 Vassar Street, Room 123, Cambridge, MA 02139
• Doors open at 6:30 and presentations begin at 7:00pm.
• The event is free; however, due to limited space at the venue, you must reserve a spot by filling out the form below.

Directions

The Stata Center is located at 32 Vassar St. in Cambridge. It is between Main St and Mass Ave. The closest T stop is Kendall Station on the red line.

Street parking is plentiful in this neighborhood, but you can also park in the 139 Mass Ave MIT parking lot after 4pm.

Help out

This event is run by an all volunteer non-profit. Here are some ways you can help out:

• Promote this event in your social networks using the hashtag #icraft. (e.g. your office, twitter, facebook)
• Print and share this flyer about the weekend
• Help us find some sponsors for refreshments for this event. (The sponsorship information is on the ticket form below)
• Volunteer to help at the event.
• Submit a presentation proposal or talk one of your friends into it.

Submit a presentation

If you would like to speak, please submit a proposal here. All talks will be recorded and posted on the web after the event. Please submit your presentation proposals by Dec 28th. We will post accepted presentations on the main site as the presentations are accepted.

Watch some Ignite Craft Boston Video from last year to get an idea about what these talks look like.

For a Full Fabric/Fiber weekend

Don’t forget to register for FiberCamp weekend

IgniteCraft Boston 2013 is sponsored by

and your donations. Want to get your business’ name in lights in front of 200-300 crafters and craft enthusiasts? Pick up a Sponsor ticket in the form below! Sponsorships are also open for FiberCamp!

Talks so far …

Large Scale Collaborative Origami

I build really big origami sculptures! How big? 50,000 plus pieces of paper — 5 to 10 feet on a side — weighing over a hundred pounds. I don’t do it by myself — I do it with the help of hundreds of volunteers. In my talk I will describe the design process, educational issues and the recruitment and organization of the volunteer teams.

Dr. Jeannine Mosely

Jeannine Mosely is an origami artist specializing in abstract mathematical structures. She is best known for her designs folded from business cards and her curved crease designs. She is also the inventor of “or-egg-ami”, origami made from egg cartons.

Let’s Make Toys: Designing and Sewing Stuffed Animals

I began designing and sewing stuffed animals in 2005. I’d been a middle school teacher, and now was a new mother, and I was seeking a creative outlet. I’d been introduced to sewing in 8th grade Home Economics and finally had time to really learn. I read and sewed patterns from a dozen vintage soft toy books I’d check out of the library after story time each week and I started a craft blog to document what I was learning. Interacting with other softie makers online and experimenting every day with new shapes and fabrics I developed my skills as a designer. In 2008 I started making soft sculpture birds of every variety and this work culminated in my first book, The Artful Bird: Feathered Friends to Make and Sew, which was published by Interweave in 2011. Since then I’ve expanded into designing all sorts of stuffed animals, and the teacher in me has cropped up again, too. My new book, Stuffed Animals: From Concept to Construction, will be out in May and I teach stuffed animal design through in-person workshops and on my blog. Creating three-dimensional animals from fabric is incredibly exciting and endlessly interesting to me.

Abby Glassenberg
Abby Glassenberg Design, Inc.

Abby Glassenberg creates unique patterns for stuffed animals from her home studio in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Since 2005 she has shared her creations and her ideas on design, technique and the online culture of craft through her blog. Abby has a master’s degree in education from Harvard and taught middle school social studies in Mississippi and Massachusetts before becoming a textile artist and the mother of three girls. Today Abby enjoys teaching people to sew and opening their eyes to the joy of designing their own stuffed animals. Abby’s first book, The Artful Bird: Feathered Friends To Make and Sew, was an ALA Booklist top ten craft book of 2011. Her new book about soft toy design and will be published by Lark in May of 2013. Abby has also licensed toy designs to Simplicity. You can find more of Abby’s stuffed animal patterns in her Craftsy pattern shop and her Etsy shop.

Dyeing Self-Patterning Yarn or Attack of the Giant Skein

Every year, I dye self-patterning sock yarn for my sock club members.  I will show people how wind, dye and rewind their own self-patterning yarn.  It involves winding a 60 foot circumference skein, dyeing it different colors then winding it back into regular sized skeins so that you can actually work with it.  It is a real adventure working with a skein of yarn that stretches the length of the shop and then some.

Lucy Lee
Owner, Mind’s Eye Yarns

I have owned Mind’s Eye Yarns in Cambridge for more than 15 years.  Before that, I was a public school music teacher. I have been dyeing yarn for the shop for over ten years.  I started out doing some solar dyeing with Kool-aid which became a gateway drug to a full blown dye studio that appears at regular intervals in my kitchen.  I enjoy dyeing different kinds of yarn but my real love is sock yarn.  You really can’t have too many kinds or too many colors of sock yarn.

Growing the Creative Industries of Massachusetts

What are the creative industries and who is part of the creative industries?

Helena Fruscio, Creative Economy Industry Director for the State of Massachusetts, will give an eye-opening presentation on the statewide resources designed to actively nurture the flourishing of creative industry businesses. She will share stories of her work with the state in both reaching out to and supporting the the creative industries statewide.

Helena Fruscio
Creative Economy Industry Director
Commonwealth of Massachusetts

Helena Fruscio is the Creative Economy Industry Director for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. She has held the position since October of 2011 and in this roll will help advance the state’s $1 billion creative economy industry, which currently employs over 100,000 Massachusetts workers. Helena has been widely praised for her leadership as Director of Berkshire Creative Economy Council in western Massachusetts since 2009. She has also has provided excellent leadership and input into the work of the statewide Creative Economy Council and, more recently, as a gubernatorial appointee to the Economic Development Planning Council. Helena also has a BFA in Ceramic Sculpture, and that work also gives her a running head start into the issues that face creative businesses across the state.

SAORI Weaving

Introduction to SAORI Weaving, freestyle of weaving from Japan.

Mihoko Wakabayashi
SAORI Worcester
She opened the first SAORI studio in US in 2000 and since then she has been teaching hundreds of people including mental/physical challenged people through her studio in Worcester.

The Fine Craft of Knitted Canvasses

In 2011 I was working on a series of abstract paintings when I realized that canvas is just fabric and that as a knitter I make fabric all the time. So, I thought, why don’t I just knit my canvasses? And then the floodgate opened. In my knitted canvasses the texture of what I knit for the canvas influences the pattern of the paint, directly connecting the female-dominated craft of knitting with the male-dominated fine art of abstract oil painting to make a stronger, original piece. But enough art speak, we all know I just do this so I can smear gesso all over blankets and mittens.

Miranda Aisling
Artist
Miranda Aisling (ashleen) does a little bit of everything when it comes to art. As a painter, knitter, writer, potter, singer-songwriter, storyteller, and community artist Miranda lives and breathes creativity. She moved to Boston in 2011 and works as an art instructor at the Museum of Fine Arts while completing her M.ed. in Community Art at Lesley University. Although she experiments with many art forms, her main material is the ideas themselves which constantly push her to attempt new artistic feats whether or not they succeed.

Biomedical textiles

Textiles are everywhere! This presentation will look at how biomedical textiles are made and how they are used.

Rebecca Harris
Textile Engineer
I have worked for a biomedical company in the Boston area for about 5 years, and have helped develop and manufacture devices for surgical implantation. I enjoy explaining how the machines work and the types of applications these textiles can be used for.

The Toymaker Project: Technological Empowerment for Sexuality and Pleasure

A lot of people love making, hacking, and crafting because it’s fulfilling to create something that makes your life better or more enjoyable. Some of us just happen to be interested in making our lives better and more enjoyable…in bed.

I’m going to talk about what that kind of empowerment looks like with regards to sex and pleasure: I’ll tell you the story of how I got started as a sex blogger and toymaker, show off some of my prototypes, and give suggestions for folks who are interested in exploring the kinds of fun projects you won’t see in Make magazine.

Dr. Kristen Stubbs
The Toymaker Project
Dr. Kristen Stubbs is a queer/pansexual roboticist who’s more interested in people than in technology. Kristen earned her Ph.D. in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University in 2008. She’s currently working to build a sex toy or piece of BDSM equipment using every workshop at Artisan’s Asylum in Somerville. Kristen blogs about technological empowerment for sexuality and pleasure, including her own experiences and creations, at www.toymakerproject.com. She co-organizes teasecraft-boston, a local meetup group for sex/kink-positive makers; and her new startup is Passionate Produce, a sex/kink-positive crowdfunding site.

The Dolly-Mamas

The Dolly-Mamas was started in 2008 by Lisa Lazdowsky and Darlene Mangone. We made 100 dolls for Hurricane Katrina victims. That summer we also made dolls to send to Uganda to the African Baobob Organization. People met at the Creative Warehouse on Tuesday nights and knitted dolls to send to children that were orphaned by aids. The dolls were all over the store and people wanted to purchase them or make them for themselves. That’s when we decided to design knitted felted dolls for people to make for themselves. We started with 10 dolls and began selling kits to yarn shops all over the country. That year we also connected with the Connect-Africa foundation to have our sample dolls knit for the yarn stores that purchased our kits. The dolls are knitted in Uganda then are felted and finished here. We employee about 20 people in 2 different villages in Uganda to knit our dolls. Now we have 53 dolls and 6 Critters. Our kits are manufactured and shipped from the Charles River Center in Needham, MA..

Lisa Lazdowsky
co-owner
The Dolly-Mamas LLC
Owner of the Creative Warehouse yarn shop in Needham, MA and co-owner of the Dolly-Mamas LLC.

RPM: Random Postcard Masterpiece

Materials needed: pens/pencils/markers, scraps of paper, postcard sized blank cardboard, postage stamps

I want to present on a craft game a friend and I invented about a month ago called RPM: Random Postcard Masterpiece. I hope to inspire others to participate, as it is a fun social and imaginative game. It involves collaboration, creativity, and communication. There is no limit to how many can play, rules are adaptable to be inclusive. It stretches your mind to think differently and make associations between words that might not be thought of as relating. The other aspects I love about this craft game is that it involves collaboration between illustrators, the US postal system, and the recipients. This game began with two players, and over the course of a month, has grown to include eight more people.

Hilary Bouvier
Independent Artist
French-American from France, Indonesia and the US, I have recently moved back to Boston. Besides drawing, traveling is one of my life passions, exploring new places and cultures. Sending snail mail from around the world with unique stamps, and receiving some, is an adventure in itself, and RPM has expanded upon this hobby.

Making a career in the fiber arts

I am going to speak about making a career and finding your passion in the fibers arts. I am going to speak about my personal experience of how the Eliot school in JP helped me jump start my career path several years ago by offering me to teach one course in knitting. Through this opportunity, I am now teaching four different levels of knitting classes, I have launched my yarn dyeing business and I am the liaison for the fiber arts department at the Eliot school. I will speak a little more about my yarn business an talk about some ideas I have for expansion of the fiber arts department at the Eliot school.

Diane Ivey
Owner Lady Dye Fiber Arts & Design and Special Projects Coordinator, Eliot School
Lady Dye Fiber Arts & Design is an eco-friendly fiber arts business that creates vibrant and colorful hand-painted yarns and accessories.As the owner of Lady Dye Fiber Arts & Design, Diane Ivey finds inspiration for her hand-painted yarns through street art. Diane Ivey joined the Eliot School staff in 2011 as the Special Events Coordinator. She teaches knitting and dyeing classes at the Eliot School.

Glitch Art and Databending

Glitch art is finding something beautiful in accidents and the unintended. This could be the result of weak or unexpected electrical contacts, memory errors, buggy code, or the manipulation of media data in unintended ways. The latter, also known as databending, can produce some very intriguing results that the artist has at least some control over. This presentation will cover a range of databending techniques and effects.

Byron Galbraith
PhD Student, Boston University
Byron Galbraith is currently a PhD student in the Cognitive and Neural Systems program at Boston University, where he works on brain-computer interfaces and assistive autonomous robotics.

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