Always Start At The Beginning, Dear (I am hearing my mother's voice, loud and perfectly clear).
Wednesday was the kick-off of a three-day marathon event in Studio 508. Sandra and Cynthia came to stay with me. Charles so very kindly offered to go to Knoxville and stay and work on the house there. He has numbers of projects there to keep him busy, he assured me, as well as cousins to have dinner with. So, this became a chick party! And this way, Sandra and Cynthia could have the twin beds and the larger bathroom. Perfect!
Sandra and Cynthia arrived late Wednesday morning, and we had a salad for lunch. We ate early so we wouldn't feel pressured to stop once we had gotten too deeply into something interesting. As things progressed, we did do deeply interesting things. Sandra brought some of her toys, and we began to play with wool-ish items.
Meet Little Otto:
With the help of Little Otto, a champion Drum Carder, I was able to create several batts of blended wool fibers. Cynthia was working on a felted ball that required a number of closely-related shades of blue and green, and I do love to card and mix colors, so I grabbed Little Otto and set up my work station at the drafting table. These are some of the batts that Little Otto and I cranked out for Cynthia:
They became part of a felted shape that she plans to cut down the center to reveal the layers of differently-colored roving. It will need a lot of serious wet-felting to get to the cutting stage.
Sandra, meanwhile, worked at the felting/wool working table. She was making landscapes for later embroidery, using felted wool and roving, and blending them with her Baby Lock Embellisher. I think the landscapes got a little tiring, because she also made this grid:
By Wednesday afternoon, there was a respectable wool collection in progress:
The flower shows better after Cynthia had worked some more on it-- the "Orange Blossom" was originally a semi-felted cord of pumpkin-colored wool I had made last year for a project that didn't turn out as expected, so the cord was tossed into the "Ponder These Pieces" bin. She sewed the cord into a closed circle-- please remember that Cynthia's least favorite of the least favorite possible colors is ORANGE, and you get some feel for how seriously she took her responsibilities for "pondering". She added two leaves that were a combination project. Jill gave the leaves to Sandra, and Sandra added some decorative detail, then ran the newly-refurbished leaves through the embellisher to give a more uniform texture to the leaf surface. And this is the semi-finished result. We may have to check out her blog in a few days to see what other "ponderings" have taken place over the Orange Blossom:
We were late in leaving the studio and walking the short distance to the house Wednesday night. There were three distinct flopping-on-the-mattress sounds heard from our house. . .
Thursday we had a nice treat. Jordan and Julie so kindly made time for us to make a mid-morning visit, and to our surprise, Julie had a lunch for us. She works with a nurse whose husband has a catering business/small restaurant called "It's About Thyme" in Norcross, and Julie drove there to bring us fresh-out-of-the-oven, marvelous quiche(s?)-- I think they may be the best I've ever had! I was envious-- the custard was so much creamier than the one I make. I am going to have to really step up the quality of my quiche before I offer it to family or guests again! Thank you, dear!
Bethy and Ethan were perfect little angels (this is the grandmother bragging, but they were loverly! Honest!):
Cynthia took photos and said she would share them with me, so I will, in turn, post them later.
We went on to painting old picture frames Thursday afternoon. I have boxes and boxes of them-- a dozen, maybe more-- so we had a nice selection of sizes for playing around. Here are some results of the frame-painting:
Isn't the little edge pretty? Cynthia got that effect by rubbing the contrasting color over the painted frame, an old one so darkened with age that the little raised trim on the edge scarcely showed up. A bit of paint and some imagination go a long way, don't they! In the frame is an embroidered sampler of Fly Stitches. We used the Beaney and Littlejohn book, Stitch Magic for inspiration.
In this photo, Sandra's sampler of Herringbone Stitch is lying inside a frame she painted. There are many coats of paint on these frames!
Mine was the small frame for a dresser-top mirror whose mirror never really fit too well. In place of the ill-fated mirror, I must think of something to go in it that these cool water tones will show off well.
After dinner we went back to the studio to work with Stitch Magic, and the samplers morphed into fiber balls that we began putting together from fabric and woolen scraps. Over the surface of several balls, we added VERY freestyle stitches that we had just been sampling. I began to wrap one (the pink one) and the wrapping was so delightful I couldn't stop. It began life as a deeply red ball, but changed colors a number of times in the wrapping process. It ended as a pink ball, larger than a softball. I also began working on one I determined would eventually be blue. A Pink and a Blue Ball-- maybe for Bethany and Ethan? Here I've lined our collection up as if they were billiard balls, ready for a rather bumpy run across the table:
My two are the big ones at the back. Sandra and Cynthia created the smaller, neater ones, including the blue felted one (which has more to be done to it). Have you guessed by now that I can't turn an idea loose as easily as others, hence the lack of almost any evidence of production on my part!
We were even more tired Thursday evening than Wednesday. More flopping sounds . . .
Friday morning came slowly to all of us. We had overdosed on Creative Exchange for two days, and the batteries needed recharging. We did make the trip to the studio after breakfast, but not at a zip pace. There were still so many ideas we had discussed but not tried, yet. And Charles came in from Knoxville before lunch, so we took a break about 1:00 and had an extremely health-conscious salad. In fact, I could see that Charles was getting light-headed from all the raw, fresh veggies and sliced chicken breast. When I asked if he would be all right, his reply was that he needed a hamburger.
Back in the studio (while the Hamburger-Needy Charles did the dishes), Cynthia and I were finishing up our "Fiber Orbs" while Sandra was at the sewing machine. She was interested in the possibilities lying in the basket of vintage quilt scraps, eventually bringing up some pieces to use as coasters. A large stack of these is nice-- all different sizes, very simple zig-zagged edges, and (sometimes) a bit of stitching over the seams of the old fabrics to add style. And the stitching sometimes helps hold everything together. They are thin coasters, can be stacked double for really weepy cold glasses, and can be tossed in the wash if needed. Something useful from throw-away items! How "Green" is that?
I hated to see them leave. We had laughed and experimented with ideas and materials, and for three days nothing really seemed beyond our doing. Later, as Charles and I talked about our respective past few days, I concluded I'd had the better experience. He was busy with yard work and landscaping projects and has a mountain of housework to do next week when he returns to Knoxville. I, on the other hand, played my heart out with dear friends here in the studio. I patted him on the shoulder, but it was hard to look too sympathetic when I was smiling so widely!
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