The Color Books

Once upon a time, I kept color books.  Not Coloring Books, but books arranged by color content.  These books are small, landscape formats (about 5" x 7") that I used for saving clips of work, paint chips, and notes on associations of colors.  Pinned or stapled to the pages are little stitched samples of an idea or color combination.

One of the things I discovered with working in these books is that no matter how well thought out a painted color might be, it is only paint on paper.  Despite careful thread choices, the only choices I really have are what is in my thread box, what the manufacturer has made available.  Eventually I began dyeing my own fabric and thread, and though I might design with color families in mind, I don't strive frustratingly to match anything I've painted or inked in or set so immovably in my design plan.

After coming to these dismaying conclusions, I began working less and less in the books, and since they are mostly stuffed beyond disturbing with new material, they remain as they are, an experiment.  When I went through them last evening with an eye to working with a particular color scheme, I  stopped and photographed some of the little sampling bits there.  Doodles.  Questions answered-- I still don't have a name for these little pieces.

One of my favorites is in the red book, a compilation of scraps from clothes-making over the years.  Mother used to sew, to create her own clothes.  She was a marvelous seamstress as well as designer, but she had no career opportunity other than housewife.  She taught her daughters to sew, and the lessons (mostly) stuck.  We were certainly well-dressed children!  And I was lucky enough to fall heir to her fabric scraps when she would do a clean-out.  This little compilation has an apple cut from scraps of one of the last blouses she made for herself, little ruffled pants for Bethy, a blouse for me . . .

Another is from the Violet Book, an exercise on the theme of "portals:"

Layers of fabric and stitch have a textural appeal for me that has been a subject of exploration for years.  When I discovered scrim, however, my stitching life took a marvelous new turn.

And so forth.  Studio Journals, Sketchbooks or even notebooks are such useful things to construct-- to say nothing of the fun of working quite freely without the pressure of preparing work for others to see.  They stimulate exploration of an idea in its initial form, and years later those ideas can be a way of seeing something very differently, of starting off in another direction altogether.  My personally favorite part of the studio is the wall of bookcases with the shelves of studio journals!  Of course, the other books and magazines are interesting, too.  My first stop when starting a new work, though, is always the studio journal cases.

Birthday Garden

For my sister, who has a marvelous green thumb, an on-the-wall garden to see her through the winter until her spring bulbs begin pushing up.  Layers of fabric and stitch in a wide assortment of weights . . .  modeled on a garden not far from us that is laid out in orderly rows and beds of color.

Happy Birthday, Baby Sister!

A young poet in the family

Bethy is always experimenting with words, rhyming, thinking up beautiful stories and sometimes illustrating them.  After school one afternoon, she stood beside me (at the computer) and recited her latest poem as I typed it.  With her permission, I share this with you.

School Week

Monday moans,

Tuesday groans,

Wednesday: weirdness.

Thursday, thorns.

Fantastic Friday

(the only good one)

Saturday scores,

Sunday stings--

And Monday moans and

Groans

Again

--Bethany Patsios

Nine and three-quarters years old

I think she has totally captured the school and work week experience.

Blog Inspiration: Mandy Pattullo

Have you ever had a favorite artist whose work inspires you to improve your own creative process?  Or, maybe to investigate things you hadn't considered before?  Mandy Pattullo is one of those inspiring people to me.  I do not have her sketching skills, nor do I work with some of the materials she uses, but her love of old fabric and stitch and the dignity she gives in her transformations of these pieces is such a person.

For the month of January she began working with postage stamps, filling a sketchbook with paint, paper and cloth, and it made me think about my own box of postage stamps, collected over the years-- and how dwindling the availability of these stamps becomes as we e-mail more or send things through carriers rather than the postal service.  I pulled out the packed-to-the-gills box and marveled at these little works of art, just as I had when I was ten years old.  And if I was a cartoon, I would have had a little conversation bubble over my head with a lightbulb clicking on:  Bingo!

The Bingo Moment came when I realized that the diminutive size was perfect for the palm-sized fabric collages I was working on.  I needed a focal point that had great detail to it, and it must be quite small.  A piece of printed fabric was not to scale, and the pieces were too small to create easily-recognized images.  And there were so many colors stored in those tiny bits of paper . . .

The pieces are built in my little fabric sandwich style, layered and stitched work that might be layers of hand-dyed pieces from old napkins and tablecloths, pieces of clothing, things left over from other projects-- even the threads were often re-cycled by over-dyeing when I had an abundance of one color or another.  The edges might be finished or not, depending on the fabric itself.  The unfinished edge is a way of giving immediacy to a piece, like a quick sketch from a vacation or a walk in the woods.

If you would like to see Mandy's work, her blog is here.  Below are two of the pieces her postage stamp collages inspired me to create.  Now that the gate has been unlatched, this may go on for a while . . .  lots of stamps . . .  tons of fabric scraps . . .  long winter days ahead . . .  ? ? ?

Thank you, Mandy!

Inspired by - Carol Ann Waugh

From a book I borrowed called Stupendous Stitching, by Carol Ann Waugh, I was inspired to use machine and hand stitch together to make this Zentangle piece.  It was a bit of fun, since I have not really completely explored the decorative stitch patterns on the Sapphire the way I have the older Viking.  Keeping the pallet limited to golds and turquoise helped, so the only choices were the texture of the thread on the hand stitched segments.

Thanks to Sherry for encouraging the Freestylers to use our stitches in "tangling" ways, reminiscent of a zentangle.  And thank you, Jill, for loaning me the book!

Hello, 2016!

My goodness!  When I was a little girl in school, I couldn't imagine how people would "say" the numbers after 1999.  It was so far away and there were so many things to worry about before school the next day . . .  And yet, today, I'm how many years into that foreign territory?

Welcome, New Year.  With all your gifts and losses, we welcome you.

A little pre-Christmas studio work

These could not be posted before Christmas, as they were made for Jordan and Julie.  Is there anything worse than a spoiled Christmas surprise?

Both the pieces were worked in hand rather than with a hoop or frame.  That allowed the stitches to be a little uneven and not so precise.  This first one, particularly, would be deadly boring if it had been stitched firmly and tightly.

As Jordan is devoted to hiking and camping, especially along the Appalachian Trail, the mountains are for him:

Although there is only one stitch used, there is a variety of textures and color in the thread and little scraps of fabric that lie under the undulations of the mountains, all of them from my dyeing in the garage this past summer and fall.  The smallest scrap of fabric can be such an interesting thing to work with.  The sky is an overlay of cotton organdy that was bundled and rusted several years ago, and the linen that is the base fabric was a dinner napkin, splashed with color.  The scraps of cotton and linen that are the mountains and valleys lie on top of these two pieces.

Below is the piece for Julie, also worked in hand.  Is it an act of redundancy to give an English woman a garden piece?  I hope not.  Here I added beads to the mix of hand-colored materials.  This piece was not held to only one stitch as the mountains were, but a garden would be a little more riotous, even uncontrolled, wouldn't it?  The blocks of layered cloth make this quite textured, and by continuing to stitch around the side to the edge of the cloth, the energy of the garden (as with the mountain piece) wraps around and to the back of the frame.  The truth was that I was having too much fun stitching this to let a little thing like the parameters of the frame stop me.

Best Christmas and New Year's wishes, dear family!

Rainy Day in the Neighborhood

Obsessive stitch.  Neurotic stitch.  The sorts of stitched pieces that have their roots in a succession of rainy days.  About 4" x 4".  Layers of different fabrics, stitched experimentally-- part of this was stitched and dyed prior to the appliqué and addition of more stitching, which gives it great textural interest.

Conversations With Silk Thread

I have a great weakness for silk.  Silk fabric, even tiny scraps.  Thread, in all its manifestations.  Throwster's Waste.  Ravellings.  Cocoons.  Carded Batts.  Loving the tactile quality of silk has even encouraged me to take better care of my hands, which can grow quite rough from the day-to-day activities of washing, doing laundry and cooking, dyeing, gardening, even stitching on rough fabrics.

The most interesting quality of silk, though, is the conversation that come from winding the newly-dyed thread onto plastic bobbins, the wondering what the future of a thread might be and auditioning all sorts of scenarios for that future.




The box of Yellows is ablaze with happy possibilities-- the Yellow of sunlight pouring through a summer sky is tucked next to what must be a zinnia in waiting.  How many lumpy, bumpy things could come from the coarse silk-- a silk most unashamed of its rude beginnings outside of the mulberry-fed circle of elite threads?









Orange is not always for pumpkins.  Saffron robes of Tibetan monks, the day lilies growing beside the road in patience and peace, and the pale tints that run to Salmon and Coral all borrow from that much-maligned color.











Then there are the Reds, Empresses every one!  Not modestly pursuing a quiet place in a corner, but brashly pushing forward to take seats at the front of the room and making a lot of noise fluffing and shaping themselves as they are seated.  The color of boldness and power.  Of complete confidence.  Synonymous with happiness to the Chinese.










Moving from Red to the Violet family, we pass through fields of wildflowers, bergamot, field thistles, four o'clocks and coneflowers.  Delicate wild geraniums lean toward the shaded, quieter areas.  And Magenta dances through all these Red-Blues.











The Royal Purples take their place, waking sedately past all gathered in the room to seats especially set up for them in front of the haughty Reds.  Centuries of awe and obedience radiate from them, the color set aside for the rulers, movers and shakers of older worlds.  Even their diluted hues are noteworthy-- the moodiness of a stormy sky is here, the strike of a last, dying sun slicing through the darkening sky.








After all that tussle at the front of the room, the Blues emerge, a breath of tranquility and peace.  Sky.  Sea.  Eternity.  The promise of safe harbor and clear skies.  Moving from the truest hue to the shared Aqua Marines and Turquoise, recalling water and life.









The Greens spring from the earth beside that watery Blue.  Green of leaf, grass, stem, moss, mountain and curving field, where strong stalks support the heavy sunflower heads floating above all as they turn their faces to follow the sun.  Fields of lush grass for grazing animals.  Heavily forested mountains.









And so we have wandered to the Chartreuses who lie at the door of Yellow, the bridge between earthy Green and Blue sky, the first colors of the spring emerging after the long and almost colorless winter.







The Greys and Browns are the step-children of the color wheel, but really deserve their own kingdom apart from the hues.  From the sum of all colors, Black, to the almost-absent tints of Grey and Ecru, they are the toning mechanisms that give some dignity to the babble of the primaries and their offspring.

It is a wonder-filled thing to have conversations with a bowl of silk threads.

Two Trees, Moon

Roughly 5" square.  From sketches of the early autumn trees in the moonlight.

Topographies of the Mind

I had an idea about stitches suspended above a surface, and to this end I experimented with a block of wood, nails, wire of different gauges, strips of cloth, yarn of various sizes, a woven ribbon of some stiff, natural fiber, and a couple of tubes of blue and white acrylic paint.

The block of wood was a scrap of 2" x 6" lumber, painted in layers of blue, slightly distressed-looking.  When it was dry, I planned paths across the surface and  began to nail into it.  With the nails in place, I used different materials, including picture hanging wire, to begin wrapping and stitching the posts.  Before this, I would never have guessed that I could actually shape stitches with picture hanging wire.

The circular forms took shape as I connected the lines with stitch.  After the stitching was finished I hammered the nails further into the block.

The result is akin to a topographic map, some of the hills quite tall and broad, others lower, more like islands in a stream.

When the call for entries came in August or September for a mixed media international exhibit sponsored by EGA, I was still working on this piece in fits and starts, so I set other things aside and began working to finish it in earnest.  And two days ago, I got word that the piece had been accepted!

Now I have only to package and mail it to Louisville after the New Year for the photographing and set-up.  The show runs between February 3 and July 15 of 2016.

Which is by way of saying that you just never know where curiosity will lead you, or what odd materials you might find for making stitches.  Mixed Media, in the words (or near words) of Jean Littlejohn, is anything you want it to be.

Some stitching

Garden, with weeds.  A true garden.  Those tidy gardens without weeds belong to helicopter gardeners, the ones who hover and gasp and rip up the offending "weed" as if the garden police were knocking at the gate, ready to write citations and name names.

And, because I grew peas in a pot (a very large one) a couple of summers ago, I love remembering the fresh-cut smell of the pods between my fingers.   I've given them a little whimsy here with Mother of Perle buttons:

Happy Thanksgiving!

My Etsy Shop is open for business once more!

Finally.  I have begun to put things in the shop.  Yesterday some hand-dyed yarn and a group of buttons, and there is a pincushion, maybe a second one, to come.  Then there are some small pieces I did in the late summer . . .  When I get a chance, I have some hand-dyed fabric to sort.

But not today.  Today we are making the round of the bookstores with The Adorables!  Wheaties for breakfast.

I'm here:  https://www.etsy.com/shop/studio508.  Would love to have you drop by.  Bring cookies.  I have tea.

More Blue Vases

The break from social media, blogs, Etsy shop-- I have seen how much energy goes into all these things.  I plan to be very particular where I spend that energy in the future.

Through diligent shovelling in the boxes of past work, more pieces in the Blue Vase saga surfaced.  To my amazement, I had missed them, scattered as they were amongst the several boxes of work stored under a table in the studio.  If these pieces were plants, I would say they were self-sowing.  That said, I have added to their numbers with two new pieces.

Here the Blue Vase (which seems to resemble a flower pot more than a vase, I was told at a recent FreeStyle meeting) is having a rough go of it.  The flowers seem traumatized and are leaning and reaching and doing their best to be somewhere else.  This is worked on a heavily-layered fabric ground.

In response to the frenetic escapism of the first piece, this Blue Vase is shown sans flowers, a much calmer little setting.  This feels like a Joe Friday interrogation:  "Just the facts, ma'm.  Just the facts."

After looking at this for several weeks, I decided there was more to a blue vase than "just the facts."  In little nibbles of time over several days, it became a little more decorative, and the background was free-motion machine stitched:

There was a time when I simply stitched flower pots and vases in all color combinations and the dreaded Demise Of The Blue Vase had not yet burst into my life.  A long, long time ago.  This is one of those Other Vase stitcheries.  The fabric is a delicious piece of chartreuse linen, and the stitching is all the simplest of stitches-- there is even a flat satin stitch, which I rarely use anymore.  It was stitched to brighten a small, dark corner of the place I lived at the time, when my son was quite small.

The newest is a mixed media interpretation of the Blue Vase.  On Arches watercolor paper, with ink and watercolor ground, machine stitch, wire, acrylic paint (on the fabric), and hand stitch.  The paper was given a momigami treatment, but I think 140 lb. watercolor paper might not be the best candidate for that process.

Of course, after some thought, this one needed a little more personality.  Sequins, beads, a wire flower . . .  Much improved, don't you think?  The original was much too serious.

And there is yet another in progress!  This is becoming the Season Of The Blue Vase(s).  6" x 6", or near that.  That small-ish format remains my favorite.  12" x 12" is still a little scary.  The next step is, of course, to gather up the unmounted pieces and have a great, long session with fabric and stapler and needle and thread and get them onto a substrate.  Where are My People when I need them?  In an effort to lessen the chores of studio life, I am thinking I should return to simply pinning the pieces to an open spot on a wall in the house.  There is a small amount of that shrinking real estate available.  In truth, I like that look of unframed, almost unplanned wall arrangements.  After all, I am the one who needs to be entertained more than anyone else living here.  One day some years hence, my son will be puttying up the nail and pin holes and selling the house.  In advance, I apologize, Jordan.  And I promise not to be too dramatic if you break anything in my house.  Just a few tears, minimal whining . . .

Taking A Break

Thank you for visiting my blog, for your kind comments and for allowing me to drag so many of my stitched pieces into the light with you.  For now, however, I am taking a break to do some thinking and planning and a bit of experimentation.  Hope to see you again soon.

Meanwhile, be well and take the odd moment to simply be.

Nancy

Blue Vase

Many years ago, I committed what was to become a life-long mea culpa: I broke a blue glass Art Deco vase that belonged to my mother.  She handed the albatross to me and asked me if I could pull the plastic flowers out that were quite firmly wedged in place.  Of course, coming from Mother, this would not be an easy thing to do, but I had not yet lived long enough to understand this.

I still remember standing in the little laundry room at the back of the house, trying to understand why the (stupid) plastic flower on the (even more stupid) wire stem wouldn't come out of the (beautiful cobalt blue) vase's narrow opening, and I tugged at it, turned the flower, tugged again-- and the vase broke into pieces in my hands.  The break disclosed the truth:  the stem was a very long one, so Mother had simply folded it back on itself and stuffed it in the vase.  The end of the stem caught on one of the bulb-shapes of the vase and could not have been extracted without x-raying the vase, then having the Bomb Squad come in with intricate tools to work the wire out.

The drama that followed this little scene made an indelible impression on my younger self, and one day decades later, I began to embroider blue vases.  None of these stitched vases looked like The Blue Vase I so vividly remembered, but photo realism was not the point of applying needle and thread to linen.  I never put all the ensuing pieces in one place, never "collected" them on a wall.  They are scattered through my house, and occasionally I come across one in the studio stored in a box of old work.  I numbered them, at first, and there were more than thirty pieces before I stopped numbering.  Some I cannibalized for other projects, some were made into greeting cards (but not for my mother), so they are lost to me.  I will post pictures of these little pieces as I come across them, and maybe they will finally be together, if only in the world of the internet!

These pieces, however, I do have, and I begin my exhibit:  The piece at the top of the page, "Sansevieria" was first posted in 2010, but as it is part of the series, I include it here.

Below is the first.  I remember carrying it in the pocket of my jacket, along with a needle and a little clutch of DMC matte cotton that had been cut into 12 or 14 inch lengths.  I would work on it as I walked downtown at lunchtime, in traffic when I was stopped at a light for 45 minutes at a time . . .  in all the odd moments in a busy life of wife and mother with more than one job.

These two were done using more scraps from the same piece of very loose, rough linen as the first.  Once it came to filling the vases with flowers, the rayon bullions couldn't be stitched while walking in downtown Atlanta, and I needed good light and a quiet place to work.

Here the blue vase got a rug-like setting, with the felted triangular shaped appliqué in the border.  The tassels are made from DMC cotton floss.

This rather mis-shapen piece is a combination of Machine and hand embroidery with vintage cotton appliqué.  The rusted ground cloth was from a flurry of rusting fabrics I did in 2012.

The Blue Vase needed a break, so this one was called "Blue Vase on Holiday."  It is on hand-made felt with tassels, beads, stitch, and the vase itself was cut from another Blue Vase piece that hadn't worked very well, then applied to this one.  I always thought the vase had chosen a far and cold country for this trip-- there seems to be ice and pale sunlight in the felt, icicles dangling from a lower corner.

Next is one of my first machine embroidery experiments.  I did not know how to set up my old Viking for free-motion embroidery, and I don't know if there was even such a name as that for this work.  The metallic and rayon threads are stitched on a piece of commercial felt, and with the beads and the funky stitched framing, it is a glitzy little piece-- yet, it is not the size of the palm of my hand!

As the Knoxville Freestylers are beginning a study on drawing with a sewing machine, I did a quick machined piece for a demonstration.  This latest Blue Vase is on a piece of hand-made felt.

This, however, may be my favorite in the Blue Vase series, which I back-stitched and titled, "Blue Vase in Black and White."

I will come across more pieces, or at least I hope so, and when I do, I'll update this post with pictures of those pieces.  Meanwhile, enjoy!

Garden, early June 2015

Doug Green, a Canadian gardener whose blog I follow, recently wrote:  "I am more myself in a garden than anywhere else on earth."  Yes.  Gardens are magical places.  The peace of the early-morning garden and a cup of tea start my day. That might be my favorite time.  Or perhaps the end of the day, sitting in utter tranquility amid all that eager green dotted with little splatters of color as the night falls and the colors deepen for one brief moment before the last of the light is drained away . . .  I think you have something, Doug!

Winding Thread

A couple of months ago I had the Adorables busy winding thread onto long, narrow bobbins for weaving shuttles.  Ethan was (of course) managing the brass thread winder, and Bethy was guiding the thread.  When I asked if everyone was having a good time, she looked up and told me she was having a "Threadful Experience."

Hmmm . . .

Silk Thread

Silk threads are a different set of dyeing techniques than cotton.  And linen, rayon, ramie and tencel all have their own rules.  I am navigating the silk maze now, still finger-painting, still in love with the colors that emerge by accident or design.  And there are a lot of interesting textures in silk, either 100% silk or silk blended with other fibers.

I did these boxes of silks in two dyeing days, though it took me several days to get the thread wound and tied into little hanks for dyeing.

The new bump in the road is finding a place to dry so many skeins.  They can't hang outside, even if there was sun every day.  They would collect pollens and airborne allergens that would keep me from using them.  And the space inside this house is all pretty well spoken for.

But all I need is a temporary drying rack-- no more new equipment!  And while dozens and dozens of skeins of thread soaked and waited to be rinsed and dried, I prowled around the downstairs looking for solutions.  The answer was folded up in a corner, behind a door:  my walker.

Think about it:  Light weight.  Folds away.  On wheels that can be raised so I don't have to bend down so far to claim the dry skeins.  And side bars for support.  The side bars can also be used to support dowels stretched the width of the walker-- dowels filled with skeins of wet yarn.  And because we have bookcases downstairs, we already have a de-humidifier in that room-- Bingo!  Here is a glimpse of the way I now utilize my walker:

Pretty expressive, isn't it, I mean, can you see how much I loathe the idea of ever again needing to use a walker for ambulatory assistance?

Several days have passed since that first attempt at drying silk thread there-- and I have made a number of improvements.  I also have an idea of using the Adorable's Legos to make a support for a second row of dowels to hang above the ones shown.  I always have an idea.  Making it work is sometimes the challenge.

The best part, however, is how neatly it all comes apart and can be stored out of the way when not being used.

Three cheers for Grandma!  Next is to figure out how the skeins can hop down on their own, climb into a basket or large wooden bowl and somehow make it up the stairs under their own steam . . .

Color, Thread, and Bethany

This little project of dyeing threads for hand embroidery has swelled to the point it has shaped the pattern of my days.  As the colors are intoxicating, I have divided dyeing into color groups:  warm colors in the morning, cool colors in the afternoon.  This way I can move along without dwelling too much with my favorite colors, to the neglect of the rest of the color wheel.  First thing each morning I begin rinsing out the thread and fabric from the previous day's work, one color group at a time.  Then to let them soak, rinse a second time, soak in more clear water, and a third rinse.  Some of the colors need a fourth and fifth rinse (I am thinking about the seductive reds and deep blues), but eventually the water runs clear enough to hang or lay them out for drying.

I do not dip the threads in dye pots.  I paint them with my (gloved) fingers, occasionally using a brush.  I do not want consistent color-- the commercial manufacturers are quite good at doing that, thank you.  I love the subtle variations of color in the skeins, and I have discovered a way of layering the colors to give a soft effect to the pastels.  A lot of work, yes, but the effect is so lovely.

As I rinse the warm colors, the resulting threads are like liquid flame in my hand, intertwined oranges and yellows both bright and subdued . . . scarlets and aubergines to make the mouth water . . . blues that recall the Georgia coast or the little glimpses of sky through the trees here at home . . . a shade of persimmon that brings memories of finding the fruit beneath a tree on the playground of the elementary school I attended . . .  All this in a handful of wet thread!

Dyeing is hard work, I have discovered.  So many steps in the process of setting up, dyeing, storing the threads so the color develops overnight, cleaning each bottle before it is returned to the refrigerator, the drips on the table (and me!) . . . and the long rinsing process the next day before the drying begins.  After the first several hundred skeins of thread were dyed, rinsed, and dried, I began to have second thoughts about doing this on a production scale for my Etsy shop.  And when I had wound the skeins of soft silk on little plastic bobbins, I knew that dyed threads would not be mainstay of the shop.  Some threads, yes, but not en masse.

Bethy has been my helper in sorting the threads.  At nine, she has a good eye for color and enjoys walking around the large table to lay the skeins in position in the color wheel we have made of them.  She is learning the difference in touch between the various fibers and knows the silks, rayons and linens go on their own special rings.  She and I are both tactile people and do an awfully lot of squeezing the bundles.  Last weekend she was so excited by the color and the feel of the threads that she cried out, "Oh, Grandma, I could do this forever!"

Her enthusiasm was the impetus I needed to dye two large batches of threads for her to sort after school today.  She allowed Ethan to help, and assigned him his favorite blues and greens to sort.  In this last day of dyeing, I also did some experimenting with black where even though I didn't fall in love with the results, I learned.  That is life: we learn by doing.

Enjoy this photo of our color study in the garage (no; drippy dye will never make it to the studio with its white floor).  Bethy is so careful to match hue and value, while Ethan simply wants blues with blue and greens with green.  Does this sound like a typical male attitude?