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!

The Beauty of Old Things

I spend part of Sunday afternoon repairing a quilt made by my husband's grandmother.  It is the quilt his father kept with him and is very worn by regular washing by indifferent hands.  I am repairing the rips and missing batting from a bag of old quilt scraps I found at a Flea Market many years ago.  No matching fabrics, but fabrics from the same era.  I eventually found that matching the shape of the damaged piece is beyond my skills, so I have been putting squares or rectangles over the tears.

A great feeling of satisfaction is my reward. 

Keeping her quilt alive is a joyous project, though rather hard on my hands and back.  But as I don't believe it has to be completed immediately, it has become my on-going project.  One day it will all be done, and I can smile at the little scraps that patch the patchwork.

How amazing— Iva Claiborne stitched these beautiful quilts (all of them slightly different sizes, as they were meant for different beds) in the evening in a corner of her living room, never dreaming that her "economies" were to be cherished things of great beauty to a grand-daughtr-in-law!

Baby Doll Clothes

October crept up on me.  One day it was summer, and the next it was long-sleeved weather.  No more cropped pants!

One day last week, Bethy made an impassioned plea for clothes for Baby Doll.  How do you turn down a four-year-old with tears in her eyes?  Of course, the books of dolls dress patterns that I owned eons ago is not in the library anywhere, so I had to wing it (every day that I need something I no longer have makes me more reluctant to clean out things I think I don't need; bad logic).  After some struggle (of course, the little pajama crawler the doll wore was made of knit and would not adapt to cotton prints), I came up with a muslin pattern, and from that could begin to put together the pieces.  My vision and the resulting garment were two entirely different things, but when you are sewing for another and they don't share your vision, you aren't obliged to "tell all," are you?  The feet gave me a problem, but after two false starts, I remembered how effective tucks could be, and the feet magically appeared when I turned the garment.

The body of the "Thingee" is made from a lavender print fabric from a quilting binge about 25 years ago.  The sleeves are from scraps of a soft cotton Mother used to make a pair of pajamas.  My mom was remarkable-- until she died, at 81, a store-bought item of clothing was a still treat.  Had she been born a generation later, she would have been a fashion designer.  We used to whine, if you can imagine, because we didn't have dresses from the Sears Roebuck catalogue like other little girls in our classes at school!  Ours were unique, one-of-a-king designs she adapted from several patterns and her ingenuity.  What ungrateful little imps the three of us were!

So, this is my first attempt at dressing a little doll since I made Barbie Doll outfits for nieces Jenny and Lisa in the 1980s.  Naturally, it doesn't stop here.  I have yet to figure out how to make bloomers with lace ruffles and a matching dress (and I thought making an outfit with feet in it was trouble!).  Am thinking seriously about teaching Bethy how to sew.