Rainy February Morning

This morning is an amazing one, rain first, and now bird song.  With great strength of purpose, Charles has kept his back yard feeder filled through the fall and winter, but migrating birds did not flock to feast here as he had hoped.  In Knoxville we had ten or more families of cardinals who lived year-round with us, but I think we are in an area where more people provide feeders, and the birds have feeding habits that don't include us, as yet.  Or maybe we should provide more gourmet seed . . .?  Hmmm . . .

In thinking about the spring to come (some say it is here already, but I can't give February away to Spring just yet), I am eager to see the flowers returning, to see which plants needs replacing, and what must be moved to a more compatible location.  Poor Charles is my gardener-in-training, so I'm glad he has kept himself limber by his labors in the gym all fall and winter!

One of the greatest gifts of the garden last year was sitting and crocheting or embroidering on the patio.  There is no way to sit in a garden in bloom and not be inspired by the color and texture there— creeping jenny dripping over the lip of a cobalt-glazed pot, zinnia, marigold, and miniature buttercups crowding together, while the foliage plants in all their gentle curves and sharp angles form a lively backdrop for the dianthus, coreopsis, echinacea, and salvias.  The grey stone I used to build the terrace walls is beginning to darken and streak, now, and Charles' thyme is flourishing between cracks in the flagged terrace.  In a few more years, the garden will look as if has been here forever.

The bulbs, of course, are pushing aside the soil and elbowing their way into the light.  Every day we see some new little scrap of color emerging from the pine straw mulch.  I saved dozens of bulbs for the planters last fall, thinking that once the bulbs were up in the spring, I could survey the yard and move them from pots to places that need more early color.  A garden is always changing as it is a living thing—and a very needy one!

So, I am thinking in soft spring colors as I sort thread in the studio and think about pale linen for stitching.  The road maps that I am so interested in have given way to thinking of maps as a way of moving through gardens, and of the different levels and perimeter plantings as outdoor rooms.

It is when Charles uncovers the fountain, however, that the spring will have truly come to the yard.  Birds who are too impatient to wait their turn at the bird bath will settle here to bathe or drink, and the squirrels will climb up for a sip of water toward the end of the day.  I have even seen the rabbits come to the herb garden beside the fountain and watch the moving water with large, darting eyes as they eat my lovely greens (I am a Beatrix Potter devotee, believing rabbits can be forgiven anything simply for the pleasure of their company).

Such are the garden dreams of a rainy February morning in Zone 7b.  Hope your February is a good one!

Bayeux Tapestry Stitch

The Bayeux Tapestry is one of the most easily recognizable pieces of textile art in the world.  It is disfigured at its farther end, has been mended over the centuries, and is mistakenly called a tapestry when it is technically a very, very long embroidery.  It tells the story of the Norman Conquest (1066) in an almost leisurely manner, not omitting the background to the struggle and small incidents whose characters are now lost to history.  Bordering the top and bottom of the work are a cast of fantastic animals, real and imaginary, as well as the Latin text to guide the observer through the action.  Click on this LINK to see photos of the tapestry.

The scenes are pictured most charmingly in wool embroidery, utilizing a surface satin stitch, couching stitch, and miles and miles of outline stitch.  There is scarcely another stitch to be found anywhere on the more than 200 feet of the canvas.

It is this surface satin stitch, surrounded by outline stitch and tied down by narrow bands of couching, that have come to be called "Bayeux Tapestry Stitch," and this stitch was the object of the Freestyle Stitch Study at our February meeting.

This is my sampler, where I tried several different types of yarn/thread, and worked the steps of the stitch in the center of the sampler for future reference (I always need a jog of the brain to jumpstart a stitch I don't use every day).

Seen up close and personal, the texture is really interesting:

And by experimenting with metallic thread, I discovered that even that hard-as-nails medium can be used in a Bayeux Stitch-- though I will admit to a bit of heavy breathing before I had all the ground stitches in place (it is wedged in between the hot pink on right and the unfinished green on left):

There are many contemporary uses for the less-know embroidery stitches.  I am making it my mission this year to go back and resurrect some of these interesting stitches and try them in various weights of cotton, wool, silk, and linen and see what variations might be possible and how they might be incorporated into my work.  And I'll bet you thought I made a New Year's Resolution to lose weight or exercise more!

Bunting

I don't know why bunting appeals to me, but things dangling in a line always command my attention.  I even find lines of clean wash pegged out to dry interesting and am sorry that the home dryer has replaced the old-fashioned habit of hanging out the wash to dry.  I have vivid memories of my mother pegging out bed linen and clothing on a clever pulley-style clothes line that my dad built for her.  It allowed her to stand on our second-floor back porch and hang load after load of wash to dry, and the clothes waved above us as we played in the back yard!

Digression aside, I have wanted to improve the windows of the studio with bunting above the scrim curtains.  Of course, I don't care to make them perfectly pointed triangles; much too tightly wrapped for me.  An interesting bunting would have some ravelling of the linen ground, be made with batting and backing and include a dash of vintage buttons and trims, single-fold seam binding, scraps of glove leather and tiny pieces of fabric, a bowl of interestingly-texturd threads—   How could this NOT be fun?

To make some sense of the idea and tie the parts of the bunting together, the three pieces that make up this small bunting have one thing in common:  kid leather salvaged from vintage gloves that are splitting or very dry and cracking.  I love the shapes of the fingers, and use them as often as I'm able.  In these three, I've used the fingers or parts of the fingers, and cut small squares from other parts of the glove.  Figuring out how to hem the several layers of the pieces was an interesting challenge, so I settled on whip-stitching some thread or combination of threads to seal up the raw edges.  After some searching, I decided upon sari thread, scrim, or heavy-weight linen.

One window done, seven more to go!  And I think it would be interesting to try something entirely different for the next one.  Does that surprise you?  Me neither!

Felted Beads Mixed With Glass Beads

Isn't this lovely?  Ethan and I completed this necklace.  I found the felted beads in an etsy shop, Alchemy Fibre Arts, and ordered several different types.  I had thought, originally, that Bethy and I would use them together, but Bethy is busy drawing with her colored pencils and crayons, and Ethan (who is always interested in seeing how things work) wanted to pull the needle through the beads.  We used glass beads to contrast with the rougher felt and strung everything on a piece of silk ribbon.

As Ethan is so proud to tell you, he is four years old, now, and able to do quite grown-up things.  Yes, Ethan.  Quite able!

I used some of the flatter "pebbles" to make flowers for the edge of a page in a new book I'm working on (this is almost unbelievably slow work, which is why I couldn't think of selling one of the books— labor at ten cents an hour would be all I might realize from my efforts).

An apology . . .

I am sorry to have been so absent these past weeks, but I have been providing the medical profession with small challenges to keep them on their toes.  It is very wearing to be ill for more than three months with no "cure" in sight.  Allergies are one culprit— yes, you can have allergy problems in the dead of winter, if your immune system enjoys hyper-drive activity.

The posts that follow are of some things I've been working on sporatically.  I hope you enjoy them.

I have not curled up and disappeared . . .

. . .  I am alive, and almost well.  I will post photos later this week of what I've been doing in my "down time."

Thanks for dropping by!

Spring Bulbs In Bloom

They would not listen to me.  I tried.  In the unseasonably warm spell (and that is a mild way of describing our winter temperature ups and downs and rains), the spring bulbs began to emerge.  I thought the green might be the end of it and the buds could be spared for March.  Not so.  Despite all my talk and pleading, those silly bulbs not only poked through the earth, but they bloomed last month.  Now, thanks to the return of more seasonable weather, they are brown and withered and pretty much past photographing.  They just wouldn't listen.  This photo records their brief heyday.

And, thousands more are just like this-- spring gone woefully wrong.  I wonder what all those hundreds of bulbs whose leaves came up but didn't bloom will do in early March?  Should I be fertilizing in January?  What sort of gardening year is taking shape?

Aaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuggggggggghhhhhhhh!!!!

Thinking vs. Doing

I read a quote by Ray Bradbury in which he says, essentially, that we should not over-think an idea, but just DO it.  Since I am one who likes to think things over a bit, I decided to test that suggestion with an Embroidered Little Quilt.

First, I had to create my substrate; i.e., the ground for my piece.  To me, that is always one of the more pleasant aspects of the creative process.  Laying fabrics against one another and looking for that perfect little bit of color and texture, finding the odd shape that sparks the entire focus of the final work . . .

But there I was, thinking again, so I tried to move on with doing.

Next, I started my pattern, my design.  I thought I would follow the irregular shape of the center piece of linen (which was cut from an ancient pair of linen trousers, working carefully around the stains), and I laid down all manner of fabric scraps to form a frame, deciding to limit my colors to green (both light and dark) and an orangey-coral shade of pink, with a touch of blue here and there . . . Beside the linen, I found ultrasuede, silk cotton— these tiny bits of left-overs fell together beautifully.  They seemed to be forming a pattern that might be another map!

Warning!  Warning!  I was moving bits of fabric and thread around and thinking too much about this.  I took it all to the sewing machine and tried to clear my mind.

With the larger fabric elements in place, the hand stitching began.  I pinned my three anchoring pieces in place, then began to wonder how to fill in around them.  To integrate the pieces or let them float?  I put in and took out several stitched lines, then I drew a filling with an air-erase pen and drew another when that design disappeared, stitched some more, took out some more, pressed it carefully from the back side, searched for different threads and began to stitch again . . .

My conclusion is that I am not a Ray Bradbury.  I could not write a plot for Star Trek.  But I can stitch small quilted, embroidered and appliquéd pieces if I am allowed to think about it.  Further, I enjoy the thought process, the rejecting and selecting that goes into making a little quilted piece.  I mean, WHAT would I think about if I was just slashing into the fabric and plowing through it all?  It is the slowing down that allows you to think when you are engaged in hand work.  No more fast lane decisions or thinking on the run, just slow, rhythmic breathing that matches the pace of the stitching.

And this is what happens when I "think about it:   "Another Map!"

Hooray for thinking!

"TOO MUCH" Reconsidered

All those bags of fabric going out of the studio have given me the shakes.  I asked Charles not to carry them off just yet, and his look spoke volumes about his assessment of my mental condition.

In fairness to me, I have just received a new book, How to make your own freeform quilts, and our author makes the point that fabrics that are old or ugly are excellent for this technique!  Old and Ugly would describe those five bags very well.  Jill was right to discourage me from casting these pearls out.

I love quilts that look as if they were sewn together between chores and cooking meals and burping babies, with no thought to color or design, and particularly if there are long, wavy strips involved.  This book is all about uneven strips of fabric.  I sat reading that first night, and when I turned the bedside light off, visions of my rotary cutter, sharpened and at the ready, with piles of fabric lined up for chopping, "danced through my head. . ."

Despite all the things I should have been doing, there was to be no peace until I had at least tried this idea.  My inner child was whining, and ever the undisciplined mother, I gave in.  I made, by reaching for the nearest thing at hand, these four coasters/mug mats.  You will notice that these are not really ugly fabrics.  I was not deep into the five bags of give-aways at the time I started this.

I can hear your groaning over the satin stitches at the edge.  I will confess that I have made a zillion coasters over the years, and the part that is always ugly to me is the strip of seam binding to finish off the edges.  The nicely put-together coasters suddenly go from usefully flat to un-usefully lumpy edged, the sort of thing that isn't safe for sitting narrow-base glasses on for even a moment.  I have voile, but voile doesn't really hide too much, does it?

There is always the possibility of reconstruction, however, because these are 5" squares, leaving open the door to finding that perfect binding and chopping off the satin stitches.

Basically, I think I need a larger project to make wavy-lined stripes.  "Larger Project" is not really a part of my vocabulary, so I am thinking about this.  Thinking hard.

Meanwhile, I am studying another quilt I pieced together before the holidays, trying to think of a way to bind this more formal piece.  Black and White and Red always look so modern, don't they?  I'll take it with me to Freestyle in January.  Two of the very best quilters in the state will be there, Tone and Sheila, and I shall ask their advice!

Small Pieces: Trees, Lovely Trees!

Although the trees have shed their leaves and stand bare against the grey sky, they are still lovely.  Like beautiful people, they "have good bones."  They surround the studio, which is why I must be constantly sorting through scraps for appliqué and embroidery whose end always reveals hints of the arboreal.

This patched-together tree has puzzled me since I began working on it.  I  tried embroidering a background, but it was so out-of-place that I snipped the silk threads and picked that idea out of the linen before it was half-way finished.  There are little beads at the tips of the branches, which I put there as a reminder of how beautiful the trees can be when they sparkle with rain or frost.  The trunk is made from scraps of vintage cotton prints from old quilt scraps salvaged from a trip to an antique shop.

Here you may see me in full tree-hugger mode!  It takes only a few lines of heavy cotton to "paint" a tree against the sky.  I had the most fun putting the little slips of fabric under the main ground to form a soft frame for the tiny piece:

Many years ago I made the piece below as a rug for a miniature house.  I renovated the small dwelling for a very particular (imaginary) resident, Miss Buelah Blondeaux (my imaginary renovation company was called "N.Claiborne and Associates").  Beulah's husband, Payne, travelled the world and collected some oddities that she was constantly trying to integrate into her more toned-down sensibility.  The  embroidered rug was one such incorporation.  The little strip of trees at the top of this rectangle, with the moon behind, has always been one of my favorite looks at winter trees (this is a small portion of the much larger rug).  Interestingly enough, it is this view of the moon I have from our present home, with the high clerestory windows that allow me to follow its progress through the evening and night as it moves from the tangle of bare branches to the freedom of the star-dotted sky:

The trees around our house have been trimmed of dead branches, thinned, and are generally well-kept.  There are nests that have not been apparent until the leaf drop, both of squirrels and birds.  Raccoons, rabbits-- an entire community of animals depends on our tiny stand of trees!  I would hate losing one.  Just a week ago, another tree fell across the street from us.  What a loss!