Waiting for the Spring

Last night, when I looked up and saw the moon through the bare branches of the trees, I was reminded of this embroidery.  The photo is part of a rug I made for a miniature house I found in an antique store sometime in the 1980s.  The resident of the house became Aunt Beulah, and she like luxurious textiles around her. This rug was for her living room, but when it was done, it was so vibrant the furniture simply disappeared in all the line and color on the floor.  She returned it to "N.Claiborne and Associates," the company she hired (because they were the cheapest) to make repairs on her house and to order furnishings for her.

I digress.

But last night, for some reason, I remembered that rug and the tangle of the trees and the moon against a grey wool flannel sky. . .

And when I was moving something today I came across this piece, from 2007.

It was made using my embellisher and dyed roving, with only the simplest of embroidery stitches to suggest the early spring.  The two embroideries, twenty years apart, express my feelings now of simply waiting for the spring to come.  Even if there is another roar of winter, I have seen daffodils pushing through to the sunlight, and Mary Kate, in New England has photographic proof of new, green grass under the semi-thawing snow, and Gail on the coast of South Carolina is enjoying the sun and her golf cart.  So, I'm waiting.

Couching Stitches

The Knoxville group is beginning a study of the Beaney-Littlejohn Stitch Magic next month, and I will be the leader.  In preparing for it I have been working on the first of the stitches Double Trouble takes up, Couching Stitch.

Poor, maligned stitch!  In their latest video, the pair asserts that a stitcher might take up a single stitch and study it the rest of her/his life and still not know everything there is to discover about that stitch.  That may be the most important thing they ever bring to their teaching.  I have experienced that realization as I worked— and continue to work— on my experimental sampler of the humble couching stitch.  As the stitch is a line stitch, one very similar to a drawn line except the medium is thread rather than paint or pencil, I am not sure if all the permutations actually help the line or simply decorate it.  Whatever the "official" take on all this experimentation, it has not been a task, but more of a delightful treat for myself.

The sampler is being worked on scraps of linen fabric that have been stitched together to form a surface of irregularly sized and placed blocks in cream, olive, beige, and white.  The stitching uses, primarily, shades of green.  It isn't a finished sampler yet (and may never be), but the journey is so interesting I hope the destination and finish is in the far distance, yet.

Aren't these little guys neat?  Fly stitches with a little extra spice added for punch:

The waving lines above are from spools of cotton weaving thread (I have a full cabinet of these wonderful cones) that are stitched down, a single line at a time.  My holding down thread is a linen so fine it would be quite passable in my sewing machine!

More stitching to do on it-- I see a wonderful place for French Knots above the altered Fly Stitches . . .

February Spring

When I was a little girl we had snow in the winter in Atlanta.  Only once.  It was polite snow, it covered everything neatly, then it melted and went away and our winters returned to being mildly chilly staging points for the spring.  And now there is talk of snow plows in the region's budgets, of pickle brine to keep the streets de-iced— Wow! What a change from the charm of the 1950's snow women we made with my Grandmother's cast-off hats!

Today, however, the spring slipped in and brought a 70˚ day!  Maybe a gift, after all the snow, ice, rain, extreme cold?  If so, my thanks for the gift!

Colors of the Soul: A Tree

This little piece began from a scrap of fabric I over-painted in the studio, and a bag full of incredible yarn and silk thread I bought at the French Knot, in Savannah.  It is a tree, and the thought behind the embroidery is that all the colors of a lifetime might still be in the tree, buried inside like a pallet of watercolors waiting for the water that brings them to life.

O.K.  I just lost anyone stumbling over this blog, I'm sure.  But think of it-- the leaves, the seasons, the mosses, the rains and snows and brilliant sunshine that all go into the life of a tree are lovely colors.  And I could not give the idea up, once I saw the scrap of fabric laid against a rectangle of brown linen.

Most of the stitches are some form of a Chain Stitch, a Bullion Knot, or Straight Stitch.  The different weights of thread give its dimensional quality.

Some close-ups of the tree.  Enjoy!

 I left the ravelling threads in place, as they seemed a part of the wabi-sabi nature of the piece.

As the stitches are layered in places, the texture is really stand-out.

Artist Trading Cards

ATCs are little artistic gems, the size of baseball trading cards. It is always amazing to me to see what can be done with 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" of surface.

The Freestylers are having a Valentine's Day ATC exchange at our February meeting, and I've been working on my card.  And there are others to be given ATCs as well, so the ideas have been popping up right and left as I ply my needle at my embroidery table.

I assembled five of the hearts for an exhibit in Knoxville this weekend for the Heart Association:

Peggy was kind enough to pick them up as she and Bob passed through Atlanta on their way home from Florida.

These are some older ATCs I've made and kept simply because I like them.  The first was cut up from a large piece of black fabric I found in the 1980s and used as a place to play with needle and thread:

Fabric suitable for free-style embroidery (i.e., non-evenweave fabric) was much more difficult to come by then than now.  The next two are a pair, a sort of winter-summer look at a stem and its foliage.  Leaves springing from a curling stem will always make my heart light.  They seem so ready for something, anything at all, to come their way.

  

I will continue to dig and find the others I've set aside for myself.  The idea that this tiny format can hold beautiful ideas is fascinating, isn't it?  But then, I suppose the collectors of baseball cards feel a bit like that, too, don't they?

Beautiful Savannah

In the dead of winter, having left home in the rain yesterday, we have come to Savannah and all the glory of January on the coast.  Savannah is such a graceful lady!  Besides being so architecturally interesting, there is a great deal of interesting shopping here.  Little, unique places.  My friend from childhood lives near here in Bluffton, and she scoped out three great places for me.

Fabrika is a small fabric and etcs. shop with big impact.  It is on Abercorn, in an interesting area one block from one of the famous squares, and just around the corner from a delightful cafe Charles and I used to frequent.  I was in danger of going off the deep end with the fabrics (are you gasping with surprise or rolling your eyes?), decided on two children's prints and some linen, bamboo, and cotton for experimentation in the next few weeks.  http://www.fabrikafinefabrics.com/

The French Knot, on Whitaker, is a shop for embroiderers.  OMG, but it is organized so well!  Found some thread I didn't know about, so I had to have a bit to play with.  Tentakulum, a German thread company, makes a line called "Painter's Threads."  I have used a number of threads from Tetakulum, so when I saw the "Painter's Shimmer Ribbon," I couldn't walk away from them!  And stranded silk in lovely families of colors.  I was thinking about how nice it would be to combine the thread(s) with some of my Fabrika treasures.  http://www.french-knot.com/

Wild Fibre.  This was the hard one to find.  It is upstairs, across from the DeSoto Hilton on Liberty Street.  But it was quite worth the trip up the stairs (I still have great difficulty with stairs, unfortunately).  The shop is small, but the selection was obviously hand-picked for knitters, crocheters, felters, spinners, and weavers.  It was such a pleasure to see the different types of roving, the hand-spun yarns, and even cone threads.  http://www.wildfibreyarns.com/

When we go back to Savannah in March, I'll have to re-visit these places.  No, I said that wrong.  I meant to say, I'll HAVE to re-visit these places.

Sketchbooks/Studio Journals

For weeks, months really, life has been driving itself and I've been half-dozing in the passenger seat.  Late last week, as I finished up some pieces in the studio, I realized that creative thought was giving way to fatigue.  I began wandering between stacks of fabric, bowls of thread, and boxes of wool, hoping for some tactile inspiration. I found lace insertion I'd set aside to color (last summer) and began to wind it onto a creel— all 50 tangled yards of it.  Still nothing.

Eventually I got to the bookcase and paused at the sketchbooks.  They were like magnets, and I took one from its shelf, then another.  It was a moment of re-visiting ideas, like a chat with old friends.  I carried one to the drafting table, opened a new sketch book and reached for a pencil.  It was obvious, after only a few minutes, that all these weeks of not drawing or making notes had taken a toll.  Once I started doodling and drawing, however, I couldn't stop the ideas from spilling out!  Blessed old journals— just handling them reminds me of how much energy they hold.

I settled into pen and ink, filling a page with black ink doodles in a Zen manner of concentrating.  I slowed down and drew circles that more nearly resembled circles than my usual quick sketch, really watched where the curved line bent, and I filled in the open spaces carefully, staying right within the lines (just like I was supposed to do in first grade and never did).  Every mark had purpose and connection.  Even my heart rate slowed, and I could feel my own breathing.  I was "in the zone."

Next I sketched one of my favorite veggies from notes I'd made for a pastel drawing class I took with my sister winter before last.

I went to the sewing machine and did a free-machine embroidery based on my pencil sketch (two bulbs of garlic is always better than one).

Glancing around the embroidery table, I realized that the Little House theme has been exhausted, but the idea of windows interests me, windows as seen from the outside of a house, and very abstract.  The best source of ideas is to walk or drive through old neighborhoods, where the architecture is apt to be more interesting.  Coincidentally, we are making a short trip to Savannah this week, where interesting architecture is the only game in town, so I should have ideas by the dozens when I'm back in the studio.

If you want inspiration to get back into working in a studio journal from more than a dozen contributing artists, go to this new website:  http://sketchbookchallenge.blogspot.com/ 

Friday I made a trip to Blick for a few pencils and the experience was so good I went back on Saturday!  Gradually, I am getting myself together again, and even driving short distances.  I had forgotten how exciting a trip to an art supply store could be— and how much more exciting to unwrap everything and try out the new toys.

New Blog

Check out the new Blog our fiber art group has launched!  If you like things that are just a little bit different, you might enjoy what this group does.

http://freethestitches.blogspot.com

Itty-Bitty Houses

When Charles brought a box to the studio and said he'd just found it, I had no idea it would be filled with some very interesting pieces of fabric.  It has been downstairs for over a year, marked as something else entirely.  One of the fabrics is a piece of Swiss cotton gauze, delicate and very, very sheer.  This became the idea for the Itty Bitty Houses.

The houses are constructed in layers, again, but not embroidered so heavily as their larger siblings.  The topmost layer is the Swiss gauze, but beneath are pale linens, silks, tea-dyed napkin scraps and/or vintage lace, and each of the doors is a finger snipped from an old glove.  The edges are raveled in keeping with my thoughts about the necessity (or lack of it) of hiding beautiful raw edges.

House 1:  A house for lovers

House 2:  A house for dreamers

House 3:  A house for growing old together

And Another Party House

Making the blue Tea Party House was too much fun, and before I even finished it, I had a second of these lively little houses in the works.  Imagine having these two bright houses in your neighborhood!  Or, maybe you do have two such places in your neighborhood, and one is next door and you spend a lot of time there, sipping tea and reaching for the hot scones and marmalade?

The contrasting colors, blue and orange, set up a tension of complements.  I used the warm colors to keep the heat turned up, with a little bright blue stitched in for contrast.  The roof is blue cotton velveteen, and the house proper is a piece of hand-dyed wool fabric.  The white door is kid leather, a scrap from an old, brittle glove.  The red roundels are held in place by a stack of three seed beads.

The edging is a combination of scraps of scrim, yarn, perle cotton, novelty yarn— whatever I could find that looked loose and interesting.  I have the notion that the folks who live in this little house are less concerned about things being nicely organized than whether or not the kettle is on to boil.

Tea Party Cottage

Ah, the perfect little cottage— maybe on the beach?  Down the street?  Or, perhaps in a space of the imagination.  The place you visit and smile as you turn into the yard because you know there's a cup of tea waiting for you, maybe a cucumber sandwich, and ironed linen napkins . . .  Stitched samplers on the wall with "Home Sweet Home" themes, and flowers and frilly doilies, too.

The base is layers of felted and embellished wool with couched threads, seed beads, sequins and turquoise roundels creating the surface design. The roof is crowned with an antique decorative piece (gift from Anne!), and the cotton velveteen upstairs window is encircled by seed beads of vivid color.

The roof was inspired by photographs of ancient Italian roof-tiles.  There is almost a carousel look to it— appropriate to a house where there is much laughter, good food and friends.

A lovely, beckoning place where fresh scones are in the oven, one of the Brandenburg Concertos is playing in the background, and the tea canisters are lined up on the scrubbed pine sideboard, just waiting for you to choose your favorite brew.   Everyone needs a place like this.

Studio Time

Finally, some studio time!  Times get busy, but when the Busy Times go on too long and I can't get to the right brain playground, I have all the symptoms of withdrawal.  This roughly 4" square has become my "new" working size, one that fits neatly in my hand.  Working in small scale has the advantage over large projects (to me) in that the small pieces draw you into the work.  Have you ever noticed people at a gallery leaning in to examine the details of a small piece?  They are seeing the story unfold in the tiny stitched (drawn/painted/etched) lines and bits of color.  With large works the viewer instinctively takes a step backward to gain space to see the larger view.  Even as I work, the small, intimate piece pulls me inside and I have an ongoing conversation with the coming-into-being piece as I work.  For me, this back-and-forth is more difficult with a larger work.

And I have a great fondness for rows of straight stitches and couched lines . . .

Periodically I "rediscover" beads, and these past couple of weeks have been a beading frenzy!  On November 15th I posted some "Zentangle" embroideries.  These I did while resting in the house, away from the studio, trying to keep my hands busy shortly after surgery.  When I was more able to move between house and studio, the beads took hold, and I went back into the pieces and re-worked them, even added another little piece to the collection.  They make nice inspirations for other work, a sort of catalog of texture and line possibilities that I keep on the work table near the beads.

Can you see the beads tucked into the little places here, on top of the stitched lines and on the buttons?

The fun here was working around the piece of hemp scrim to the right of center. This piece feels very good in the hand, as it is built on layers of heavy felted wool.

Details:

This is a study in layering, ways of keeping the natural edge without having too much raveling.  The stitches are truly quilting stitches here.

With the beads added, the already highly-textured surface just got better!

One more:  This one has layers of cottons over the wool, and after the beading was done, it is too sturdy for words.  So much nicer than a limp piece of cotton or linen!

Now, if I can find a way to plow through the snow to the studio (yes, that is an exaggeration; 6" is not a call for a snow plow) I have some little houses to photograph.  If I could persuade Charles to don snow shoes, and use my hair dryer and a large shaker of salt . . .

White Christmas

My family gathered at our house for Christmas Brunch, and we had the pleasure of watching three little children go into uber-excited mode as the snow began falling.  The snow was even more fun than their gifts— for a moment, anyway.

There has been no snowfall on Christmas Day since 1896, according to stats from the Oak Ridge laboratory monitoring air quality, so we Southerners are quite excited over the event.  People moving here from more northerly points don't have our sense of awe over snow falling.  We also aren't acquainted with "snirt," which a North Dakotan explained to me several years ago was a combination of snow and dirt (our snow doesn't linger long enough to mingle with dirt!).

Some photos of the snow-bound yard:

I thought our three inches of snow was unparalleled excitement, but my New England friend Mary Kate has a photo of her outside table and chairs that eclipses  this paltry snow— the table is completely hidden, and only the tops of the four chairs peek above the pile of snow on the deck!

And the front yard from the entryway.  Not a day to make a jaunt to the mailbox!