Little Quilt

Strip Weaving is an interesting way to create a surface for stitch.  This one came into being as a project to keep my hands busy in the evenings while we watched the British Mysteries.  Perhaps it should be called "The British Mystery Quilt"?

It is 7 1/2 by 8 1/2 inches, roughly.  Linen, mostly, with some cotton for a contrast in texture.  The stitches were limited to straight and cross stitch, with some couching and a section of tiny, tiny french knots.  The piece became such a part of my life that I was actually a little down when it was finished.  THere were evenings when some sections refused my stitches, while others yelled for attention.  The end result appears to be a map of a small, colorful town.  My granddaughter was the first to recognize the story here.  Kudos, Bethy!

Two summer strolls

In a little park, strolling, and thinking about . . .

Turquoise beads and a scrap of fringed green fabric.

The threads and I considered how many different ways we could color kid glove leather, the threads were of the opinion that the leather could NEVER be as nuanced and subtle as they.   Because it was growing late, I did not answer.  But the next day I spent a lot of time working on putting color on smooth, thin, kid leather.

Number Game(s)

Layering, appliqué, hand and machine stitch, hand-dyed fabrics . . 

Below, tiny scraps of hand-dyed linen are cobbled together by some system known only to the numbers.

Rational Thought and Travel To Asheville

We left Knoxville on Wednesday afternoon for a day of shopping in Asheville, then up the Parkway to the Folk Art Center, Big Lynn Lodge, Grassy Mountain Bookstore, Penland, Burnsville, Celo, back to Asheville and to Waechter's, to Dillsborough. . .  Four days away from the sanity of home, and it was so beautiful I couldn't think rationally.

Somewhere in the trip, my brain got shaken up.  It might have been when I was photographing a beautiful dead tree beside a Parkway overlook and as I backed, then began walking away from it, a bear popped up from the hillside, loped across the road about 50 feet away, looked at me and decided I was too much trouble to be an afternoon snack and then disappeared into the hill above me . . .  It was probably that moment when everything got discombobulated and my marbles started rolling around in the big, empty place that passes for my brain.

The marbles were still rolling around trying to find a new spot to come to rest when I heard a voice telling me, "A Quilt!!!  You are making a quilt, Nancy!"

Instead of my usual gulp of fear and immediate quelling behavior, I smiled and began to really like the idea.  In fact, I bought fabric for this project.

It was when I was standing in Waechter's looking at the lovely soft cottons and planning my hand-painting of the pieces to be applied to the soft linen ground that whatever had been shaken out of place in my loose brain began to rattle back in its niche.  I couldn't decide on a fabric.  I couldn't begin to make the quilt I had dreamt up.  I was standing there holding the most lovely white cottons I have seen since . . . when?. . . and I couldn't move.

When I got home, I was exhausted (riding for hours on end wears me out, sets the replaced bones to aching and then to screaming) but I crawled to the computer and e-mailed Jill an SOS for intervention.

The call I got in response to the e-mail was a calm, perfectly collected voice that said, "You are not going to make a quilt.  Stop thinking about it.  Go into your studio and make little pieces that are over in a few days and you can move on to your next idea."

And it worked.  No quilt, but several small pieces in the works, now.

Thank you, Jill.

Oh-- I offer this photo of the bear as proof positive that I saw what I saw and did not even exaggerate.  Scouts Honor.

ATC Roundup

It's time I photographed some of the ATCs I've been working on.  The Freestylers are having a card swap on the 12th, and I thought I'd incorporate some different techniques in a few of them and join the swapping fun.  Some cards are older, though none quite elderly.  These are simply images I enjoyed developing during this past year.

Enjoy!

The one above is made from polka dot fabric and a check fabric, which I cut apart to make the stripes.  The blue is a batik.

Below is called "Summer's Long Exit," which is how I think of the dragging Indian Summer each year.  Almost unending.  The hatch marks at bottom is a Stef Francis thread variable thickness as you sew.  A dream to work with!

Next is what was actually an exercise in straight stitching different weights and types of yarn.  I would like to say "running stitch," but most of these threads were too fat (perles) or too stiff (linen). It is so much nicer than looking at perfectly horizontal or vertical lines of stitching, isn't it?

  

For Bethy, one day, when she is interested in learning to sew.  How much fun it will be to show her how to lay down scraps of fabrics and add these lovely embellishments!

Here is an ATC that is actually a bit old (but not elderly, please; a touchy subject lately).  A combination of paper, linen fabric, cotton perle, machine-made trim, perle buttons . . .

If the day has been stressful or tedious, it is good to go into the studio and pull out the tiniest of scraps and lay them out until I have a design I like.  Not a big piece.  Small.  Manageable.  The way my life can forget to be, sometimes.

Another not-so-new.  I tried to make a pair of these, but I don't think I made it to the second piece.  The lovely background fabric in center was the inspiration for this travel commentary:

An experiment from many years ago, I found the fabric I had made through several processes, ending with these postage stamps ironed onto a fabric that had been used as a protective covering for my ironing board when I was painting and printing fabrics (including dying scrim, stretching it over the muslin and ironing it dry so the color and pattern transferred over something already stained with other colors).  The textural effect is strong here:

This is a celebration piece.  I hear a brass band, chinking glasses, happy voices, all under afternoon sun.  Helen, GA during Oktoberfest, maybe?

A leaf, made this time last year.  A great deal of layering and machine felting here, silk organza and some funky fabrics underneath it, with machine stitched details.  Only a small amount of hand-stitching becaue it was very thick with layers of bonding and felt and funky fabric:

Another fabric that I discovered while cleaning and moving things.  An abstract day dream.  Something not a bit concerned with reality, time of day, or appointments to be kept— a sort of Paul Klee morning:

A pome fruit.  With some layering in right hand corner, couching, beads . . .  I'm a little hazy on the details here.  I think the shape of the bright green fabric suggested the direction more than a well-formed idea of representation.  Unfortunately, I get started on an idea, gone into the Zone, and then I lose all sense of where, why, and even the point of ending:

Stamped fabric below.  I carved the stamp from a sheet of soft rubber, bonded the fabric to a pellon interfacing, and stitched the green image in complementary red. It has suggestions of the garden.  Unstitched, as a negative print, it is still interesting.  This is a good stamp to play with, perhaps to block portions of it and do some side-by-side printing . . .

Fabric painted five or more years ago, later made into a rectangular quilt block but recently I cut the block apart into  several ATCs, each of them with different sections of that red-black painted original fabric.  Here I've added two stamped images on right in the reddish portion, and because the images were faint and not complete circles, I worked the shapes by stitching (brokenly) the rough circles there.  Then I added the hatching marks in red over the black parts.

Only hatching marks added to the painted fabric and little corner of red linen that had been satin-stitched on by machine:

Flags flying, end of summer is approaching.  I hate to be so eager for time to pass, but I am a little ready for cooler weather!  On a fabric that could have been a summer postcard, interrupted by the curve of the sandy beach . . . ? Really?

The last piece is something I could not put down, that I kept stitching, adding buttons, just one more stitch, one more knot, one more something somewhere!  It could have been twice, three times the 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" of the original, and this idea would have been soooooo much fun to continue to develop!

In fact, I think I'll keep it as inspiration for something a little larger later on.  So many ideas, so little time!

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!

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!

Small piece: Sleet

The soft greys of these scraps were too appealing to pass over in my box of Little Bits And Pieces (not to be confused with the box of Medium-Sized Big Bits or the baskets of Bigger Bits).  The day was grey, and except for the fact that the temperature was in the 60sF, the sky could have been a sleety one.  The Atlanta area has not seen a serious cold snap yet, so I have imagined it.

I would hate to think that I have given up figurative embroidery, but these little quilts are so much fun— all small size, so the challenge is to design with clear shapes and to-the-point stitches so that the piece doesn't get too cluttered and turn into a muddle of thread and cloth in need of a good sorting.

This work joins others in my small basket of experimental pieces from the past six or eight months.  The pieces are a group of friends, each of which has its own story to tell.  It is the story of a person or an object that can be as interesting as the person or object itself, don't you think?  And the longer you know someone/something, the more interesting the story becomes.

Little Piece

I seem to have moved right through Autumn and Winter and slipped quietly into spring, as testified by the soft colors and balmy breezes in play here.  I wonder if a season is more beautiful in the imagination than the real thing . . . a sort of grass is greener theory?

*Sigh*

Now, the big question:  is my mind gone to spring coming, or spring past?  From a quick glance at the basket of hand-dyed and painted linens, I would say that I am prepared for an eternal spring.  Perhaps it is the beauty of bright, cheerful spring colors that is cheering on rainy days?

I will have a cup of tea and think through this . . .

Little Stitched Pieces—Are They Quilts?

How can something less than 2" x 3" be called a quilt?

But that is what these are: embroidered pictures worked in the three-piece quilt sandwich.  First, a journal page.

My last Journal Page was "Indian Summer 2011."  In contrast is "Frost Night," the November night when the flowers began to feel the call of the Great Beyond, bringing an end to Indian Summer.  The fabrics have been re-used from all sorts of sources:

This small rectangle is a combination of map and fantasy, a movement from waving cul-de-sacs to circles to grids:

Although I think of it as a guide that could be folded and put in the pocket and pulled out if you happened to be lost, I have no title for it, as yet.  It would stand to reason that if you made something to guide The Lost, The Lost might look for a title to help them . . . ?

Then I turned to the garden, where there is inspiration at all times of the year.  I was thinking of this past week and all the pansies I put into pots when I did these (and no, they are NOT snapshots of pansies, but I don't copy slavishly, do I?):

I am rather fond of the background, which gives the only motion to these still-life portraits.  I used my favorite silk for this, Silk with flame, by Stef Frances.  The variations in texture of the thread are perfect for this sort of background.

All these pieces have come about from a storm in the region of my brain, and I have been filling pages of two studio journals, just having a grand time with the ideas as they spill over.  Eventually this will stop and the ideas will dry up, but in full spate, inspiration in the form of a lot of questions and possible answers is heady stuff.  I like the "what if . . .?" questions.  The answers never end.  And it is criminal to have fabric that is not fulfilling its destiny by being made into something.  Lest I be tagged a felon, I exhibit evidence that I am chopping fabrics right and left in an effort to give the fabric (mostly re-cycled and often hand-painted) new life . . . .  and in the process, following my bliss!

I hope your bliss leads you onward, as well.