It is with great pleasure that I introduce to you…
DARK GREEN CURTAINS, a new album from Frown Town, to be released on May 17!
Frown Town is the solo musical project of my husband, Shane, and this is his first solo album getting pressed onto vinyl! I am darn proud of the work he has put into this and was so pleased to be able to contribute to it’s physical form by rendering the art work in felt and stitches :-)
Looking to antique calling cards and my deck of Lenormand fortune telling cards for inspiration, Shane sketched out the front cover and set to work cutting the pieces out of felt. What we landed on above was actually try number 2 after deciding that using only felt made for a more cohesive look, versus the hodgepodge of fabrics we tried at first. I really like how when you stitch into felt the stitches almost disappear, sinking into the plushness. And when you stitch nice and close the edges, it’s almost like the edges blur and the different layers blend into one… very satisfying!
We tried several different approaches for the hand embroidery of the album title on the front. Turns out I do not like embroidering onto felt! Our first try, embroidering on the book pages itself, would have been cool, but it was supremely frustrating to go through the 3 layers of felt in that area. That “disappearing” affect that I appreciated in attaching the design components by machine worked against us in the embroidery, standard back stitch embroidery looked disjointed, segmented… kinda ugly. Let me tell you, after sewing for a few hours on something and eeking out a few embroidered words, it’s hard to bring yourself to undo it, even when it doesn’t look good. That’s when you set the project aside for a few days and try to forget how long that took, so that the next time you pick it up you can do what you gotta do. That’s exactly what we did. I decided to bring the album title up between the hands so I’d only be stitching through one layer of felt, and up’d the ante with a bolder chainstitch that was much more effective and much less disjointed looking. To remedy the blank book, we wanted to add a symbol of some sort. We tried a tear drop of water and a flame… looked kinda… avatar like? Nah. We tried a clover, which was sweet, but we preferred to not add another color. I had Shane look through my Lenormand deck and pick a card to represent this album to him, and he chose #19, The Tower, which also features the suit of spades (see the card below).
Knowing that embroidering through felt didn’t bring much enjoyment for me, I convinced Shane to break cohesion and let the back credits be on simple cotton, framed with black felt. After counting out letters to help with some loose centering of the design, and drawing out some guiding lines, we shared the work by taking turns chipping away and free-handing the letters. The imperfections and little changes in size, spacing, etc only goes to show the handi-work and personality of us two stitchers ;)
All in all I think it took us…hmmm… 30 hours? I’m wasn’t counting though, I had fun, when I wasn’t boo-hooing over undoing stitches!
Shane says—
“I began writing this project in late 2023 through summer, and spent the last half of the year recording and mixing the album myself, at home. Four of my friends were kind enough to let me into their homes to record them on drums and bass. Dark Green Curtains is my most creativly complete project I've made as an artist, with a tight as can be budget, remotely made on my laptop, every detail attended to, to make the best folk rock album I could dream up within my current abilities.”
So here it is! Dark Green Curtains from Frown Town. As we near it’s release date, Shane has a kickstarter up, offering pre-orders of the album and merchandise. Please give it a look and consider supporting it in any way you are able— share it, buy the digital album, the physical album, or for a pretty penny you could even buy the one and only hand stitched version of the album cover ;) . Look for the title track, out on April 11th!
Thanks so much for being a reader, and allowing me a place to share some of the process of this collaborative art project. I am thankful for the outlet and getting some good slow stitching hours in this year with my sweetie.