An Embroidered Alphabet

More findings from digging through boxes in the studio! This time I re-discovered an alphabet I embroidered over a period of several years. They are individual tiles, which I used for pinning up titles on my class exhibition boards when I taught at John C. Campbell Folk School. I gradually expanded the alphabet to contain multiples of frequently used letters, especially the vowels. I think I've misplaced some along the way, so it would be a fun thing to stitch new ones now. Yes. In my spare time. Hmmm . . .

Actually, they're just fun. Period. No more need be said!

Round Robin 2010: My Doll

The Freestyle Group chose to make and embellish dolls as a Round Robin project this year. Seven members participated of the Fifteen. We were each free to develop our own pattern for our doll, or to use a pattern. I wanted more surface than what a body would present, so I made my doll blank shaped like a doll in a long skirt. She went out as a plain form of painted and lined linen, and this is the finished doll who returned to me.



She looks like a doll on a mission-- and her protest sign tells all: "Help Free The Stitches!"

Thanks to all who participated: Carol, Peggy, Sandra, Cynthia, Karen, and Anne. She is truly a doll after my own heart!

The Summer Garden

This little garden "grid" is an idea stemming from my observations of a lovely patio, obviously quite old, made with differently-shaped tiles, covered with moss, fallen leaves, and little plants growing between the cracked paving holding all together. Old homes have the most interesting garden features, I believe.



I am starting to plan my own extended patio, which we will probably put in sometime after the weather cools a bit (does it seem like it has been summer for an awfully long time?). Looking at different paving stone is quite interesting! And thinking about the two separate parts of this patio to be put in gives great scope to the imagination. One will be a mostly shaded patio, the other a mostly sunny one. As the tiles weather, they will gain very individual character, much like the fifteen little tiles I have embroidered. This is a detail of one of the tiles in the grid, lines of long straight stitch couched down with small straight stitches, one of my favorite ways to add texture to an area:



Along with thinking of the coming autumn, I am still capturing the flowers of the summer in my sketchbooks. These two drawings are from a sketchbook I made ten years ago and just "rediscovered." It was part of a small box of books I made for a gallery ten years ago and when I left, I packed them away and promptly forgot about them until I was rummaging amongst the boxes this past week. There are even covers I made without sewing pages in them-- a good project for later in the year.



The paper is handmade (my own), and the cover is raw-edged fabric layers stitched with heavy hand made paper as its core. The flowers are half-filled with fabric glued in to the leave and petal shapes, which is how I feel about the flowers at this time of the year-- half with us, half memory. I am trying to work out an interesting way to make a fiber work of this half-and-half concept, but the textures of paper and the fabric scraps with the delicate pen and ink lines seem to resist stitching.

As hard as it is for me to believe, there are some things in life that simply don't read well as embroideries. Ow! I can't believe I just wrote that!

Sensitive Issues #1: Age

I think I've known this would happen one day, that I may have just been waiting for the shoe to drop. When it did, I was not prepared for how sensitive I could be on the subject of age.

The physician who does the epidural injections that have made life bearable of late is a young man, not even the age of my son, and his assistant is a young, very pretty RN. They are both very pleasant, chatty people, and while I am lying on the table in the surgery they are polite enough to include me in their conversation. I think the continual patter is a sort of diversion, so that the patient doesn't over-anticipate the moment the needle and nerve meet.

On this past visit, the doctor happened to glance at my file and see my address. "Do you REALLY live on Penny Lane?" he asked, and when I said I did, he sang the opening bars of the Beatles tune by that name. I laughed and said that yes, we lived there alongside the barber and his customers . . . I went on to say that this had always been one of my favorite Beatles songs and that I liked it much better than some other of the music of that time. When he asked if I also liked Elvis, I answered that I did, but he had become a star much earlier than the Beatles. In fact, I was in elementary school when he began recording his biggest hits. The Beatles did not come to this country until the next decade, in the 60s. There was a moment of stunned silence before he asked, "You lived THEN?"

I was really, really happy that I was lying on my stomach with my face half-buried in a pillow, because I could feel the red spreading up my neck and across my face. "Yes," I hesitantly said.

You would have thought Indiana Jones had just made a new archaeological discovery. He was so excited! Then I remembered that I was trusting my spine to this young man with sharp needles and steroids, so I thought I should just answer his questions and speak very slowly and distinctly, let him get on with his work.

I told him about seeing Elvis on the Ed Sullivan Show that famous evening. We were all crowded around our little TV in the den, and we never saw his hips, although we could hear the screaming from the audience and suspected that something was up. He asked about things like Woodstock, drugs, protest movements--things that were not at all a part of my rather sheltered life at that time. I had to explain to him that my mother would have sliced and diced me if she thought I had the least hippie leanings. He was a little surprised that not every teenager one was a hippie. Of course, history isn't interested in the plain, every-day folks, but in the flamboyant ones who give spice to an Era. How true-to-life was "Mad Men?" And on and on.

I have another appointment with him at the end of this month. I wonder if I should dye my hair, have a face lift . . . Imagine what it must be like for him to have such an object of antiquity for a patient!

A Small Tiara Of Wool Felt And Sparklies!

This tiara is a miniature, made from a scrap of felt-- I originally cut some wedge-shaped pieces from the strip of pink random-dyed felt and used those wedges on an edging. What was left, when turned upside-down, was a perfect little crown. Cynthia found it in the studio when she and her mom were here, and I left it where she had set it on a table, pinned at the ends into the rounded shape.

Bethy saw it and asked to have it sitting by her when she was coloring last week, and then I began to study the little piece for possibilities. The more I thought about it, the more interesting it became. Sandra brought a bag of embellishments with her-- small sequins in bright colors and shapes, some glass beads, things I don't normally use. And the bright goodies and the textured felt suddenly seemed to be perfectly suited to one another.

The felt is lined with a brightly printed piece of cotton, and the whole is edged on the machine. I had to be very careful not to chew up the ends of the points and lose them in the feed dogs, so every point had to be started at the base of the crown and worked upward! Then I added the beading, and voile! The little tiara is now a decorated addition to Bethy's drawing table! I will bring it with me to the next Freestyle meeting and share it with my friends in Knoxville. I need to think of a way to attach it to Bethy's head, as I am quite sure this little 2" tall head piece will not sit on the table beside her for very long before I hear little footsteps and see her coming toward me with it cradled in her hands . . .

And this butterfly was quite happily having lunch amid the verbena when I passed, and s/he so graciously posed for me.

Pastel Grid

After working on the Autumn piece and reveling in the freedom of so many different stitches, I was ready to work on something softer, more controlled. I began to sort through my linen strips for inspiration. There is an article in a recent issue of Quilting Arts Magazine about a quilt block made of woven fabric strips, and I had that in mind as I sorted. Instead of soft cotton, though, I prefer to stitch on linen, and I save scraps of this wonderfully versatile fabric in all sizes and shapes. These soft colors came from dyeing and/or painting the linen. Two of the strips started life as trousers, and another is a remnant from a linen shift I made many moons ago. And except for the two cotton prints and the natural silk weaving in the upper left corner, all the little linen bits came from small boxes I use to store (hoard?) the bits and pieces that I cannot bear to part with. The shapes themselves are interesting starting points for thinking of design, and I rummage in these small boxes quite frequently for ideas.

After I got the strips woven and the pieces laid in place, I used flower thread and some vintage tatting thread to stitch things down and add more texture. It is a pleasure to look at this grid (about eight inches square, I believe) and see old clothes and painting projects there. Though it is "green" embroidery, it is only by accident. The pieces are from years of loving even the smallest scrap of linen fabric and saving it for another project!

Autumn On The Horizon

After each rain or thunderstorm I find yellow leaves lying in the flower beds and on the lawn. This has been going on for almost a month, now, and I suppose it means we will not have a lot of color when the real Autumn arrives, that the dry Summer is a harbinger of a brown Autumn.

With this in mind, I began to think about the idea that leaves might be "fingerprinted," that they might leave some trace of themselves on the places they have touched (I know, a little off the wall again). The texture and shape of the whorls of a fingerprint are interesting, so I started by gathering a bowl of Autumn-colored threads and yarn to create this forensic glimpse into the heart of the Autumn.



Creating the circling patterns was the easy part. But the heart of the pattern? Why, the leaf, of course. And in the heart of the leaf? A tree.



I was not interested in painted fabrics or layers of sophisticated embellishing techniques when I began thinking about the leaf, simply in the stitching of this idea. I always seem to go back to the stitches when I'm fumbling with an idea, and the hours I spent on this were very peaceful ones. I used stitches that left little pockets for holding beads later on, but when it came to the beading, I chose to use French Knots instead. This just didn't seem to be an embroidery in need of beads to complete it!

Tuesday with Bethy

After school, Bethy and I had some play time in the studio. She finds things there so interesting, and she is polite enough to ask before she makes them her own. Here she discovered my little Wool Cottage, still a work in progress:



She is so tired after school, now, that it is hard for her to concentrate on a project. Four years old and carrying a book bag! Scary!

Howard Hodgkin

In reading Jane Brocket's blog (author of The Gentle Art Of Domesticity) today , I saw that she mentioned the artist Howard Hodgkin, whose work is on exhibit in London.  Rather than following links to a specific site,  I googled him and simply sank into in color and texture enough to satisfy even my greedy soul. I don't think I can import photos of his artwork and still stay legal, but I would encourage you, if you like contemporary art in strong brushstrokes to check out Howard Hodgkin.  True eye candy!