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!