the idea: sew a wooden dowel into the back of the knitted canvas, make sure it’s at the very top

You may or may not remember that I already posted about this idea waaaay back for Idea No. 9.  At that point I only had one or two knitted canvasses finished and the first one had just gotten into a show.  Since then I’ve had to figure out how to hang knitted canvasses that are four feet long instead of 10 inches.  The little wire hook I used on the back of the first one just didn’t cut it for these more substantial pieces.

I’ve tried a few different things over the past month, one being to just leave my canvasses in a pile on my desk and forget about them.  I had a painting buckling in one show and another show that took the painting down because it was buckling.  So far, oh so professional.  Finally, last night, I took the two dowels that I did surgery with in the middle of the last show, and turned them into an actual support structure for my two large knitted canvasses.

There were a couple things that had to be addressed.  The canvasses, because they were unstretched and made out of a soft fabric, needed some sort of support structure.  Thus the dowels.  However, if placed a hands span down from the top of the canvas, the top would bend over.  Not helpful.  In the end I realized that the best thing to do was to hand-sew the dowels onto the canvas and, for good measure, glue the sewing to the dowels.  So far, these canvasses have been hanging beautifully and I can once again attempt to hang them in shows.