Thinking About New Directions

I got a glowing report from the doctor this morning at my 6 week check-up.  Still using a cane, but I have good range of motion and the incision is healing well (thank-you, Vitamin E Oil).  I can actually look at my knee, now, and not have to shut my eyes and pretend that leg belongs to someone else.

So now it's time to think about new projects.  And the one that has moved from the back to front of the queue is to re-make some of the clothes hanging in my closet.  Most particularly, linen shifts and jumpers from the 1990s.  With a little judicious cutting and hemming, it is quite easy to make a tunic from a linen shift.  And a few new pieces might be had from old skirts . . .

Fabric is fabric.  It doesn't know it has been designated as a skirt, top, jacket, or coat.  It just IS.  Time to move these pieces on to their next chapters.  I remember as a child my mother made my youngest sister a beautiful gathered silk skirt.  When she outgrew it, Mother used the fabric to make curtains for the bathroom.  And then she washed the curtains and passed them on to me.  I made a lovely silk blouse from the fabric that I wore for years and years.  Is it possible that I have this deeply-embedded idea of repurposing in my genes?

Update on Surgery

Two weeks ago yesterday I was just beginning this journey.  Today I am wrestling with physical therapy, but with a great deal of loving support and hard work from my husband, the two of us are making our way through all of this.  The television commercials make this all seem so easy . . . ???

I look forward to some stitch time this afternoon.  It is nice to contemplate how much nicer life will be in one month.  Two months.  Thinking about the deep summer and how nice it will be to have passed this stage brings a smile.

Keep up the stitching!

We are never too old to learn something new.

There is still the possibility to be surprised from the surgery, I discovered when all the damage to the joint did not show up in the X-ray.  Once the surgeon got into the knee, he discovered the Tibia to have been pitted with cysts.  He was able to drain and fill the cysts with new material.  He needed to find a suitable and stable place to anchor the pin/screw that holds the bottom of the new knee in place, and so used a longer-than-normal pin for that part of the procedure.

Is this TMI?

Deja Vu

On my way to becoming a Bionic Woman, I am off to get another joint replaced next week.  I will not bore you with the details of all this, but will be back when it is possible to resume a studio life.  Meanwhile: be well, kiss all the little babies you see, and stitch boldly and joyfully.  Always joyfully.

Julie's Birthday: Ethan's Felted Flowers

This is another post that could not be put up until after the event, but I share the details with you because I am so proud of my eight-year old grandson.  Grandmothers can be silly ladies, sometimes, but I think his work is quite noteworthy.

Ethan has not done any felting for a long time, and I was surprised when he said he would like to make his mom a felted picture for her birthday.  He planned this piece out on the ride home from school on a Friday afternoon.  The colors were first.  He knew he wanted a purple background, and then the color of the vase. After going through the color wheel with its complementary colors and a few just for "pop," he decided on yellow.  By the time we'd had our snack and cleaned up the dishes, he had an image in his head of the piece he would make.

First afternoon's work:  ground cloth and vase with greenery.

After I cut him a purple-dyed piece of scrim for the base (he immediately asked for a 6" x 6" size, which will match his other two pieces), he went to the purple bin of roving and chose the deep, royal shade and began to draw the wool into long, thin streamers and laying it across the wispy fabric.  I cut him a piece of netting to use as a top for holding the batt together as he machine-felted.  He worked slowly, meticulously, and gave great attention to making the base even and flat.  He was so competent with the machine that I was able to work between himself and Bethy, who was picking her favorite beads from jars and bowls of them spread on the embroidery table nearby.

At each step, he asked for me to check his work before going on to the next.  He understood that we were building back-to-front, from background to vase then the leaves followed by flowers, so with that order in mind, the little guy worked very precisely.  Julie came to pick them up just as he was beginning to think of the flowers, so everything lay exactly as he left it, to be continued Monday afternoon when he has completed his homework.

Second afternoon's work:  flowers.

Together we sketched several ideas, and he developed three flower ideas from them.  Then, to the metallic thread case for the colors, and he was off.  I showed him a new stitch, the detached chain ("Lazy Daisy"), and he tried this on the blue flower, again on the orange.  On the red, he changed to straight stitch petals.  After one more assessment, the vase needed a touch more yellow roving, and he passed the finished piece to me.  Well, I thought, almost finished.  One more step.

Third afternoon's work:  wet felting.

To really finish a piece of needle-felted cloth, my personal opinion is that it should be wet-felted.  This neatens and tightens up the edges, which can go wild and wooly in a heartbeat with the embellisher, and it smoothes the surface and softens the punched look of the roving.  To that end, we worked in the kitchen and I showed him how to do this.  The folks at HeartFelt Silks Fiber Art Tools on Etsy make a palm washboard that is perfect for this kind of finishing.  I found it after I despaired of ever being able to wet-felt again when my hands began to change and draw up, and it is a wonderful tool.  Ethan and the beautifully-crafted wooden board are a perfect pair for this work.

When we had shocked the little square in hot and cold water, felted it some more, washed it and then did it all over again, it was time for the ten minutes in  the dryer that is the "finishing touch" for the surface.  Just a few more steps, now . . .

Creating the card was a lot of fun for him.  He worked at the drafting table with  jars of colored pencils to create a birthday card that was "still under construction."  Bulldozers and trucks are busily pushing and dropping the "Happy Birthday" letters in place.  He even included a note as to why the card was in the construction phase-- the workmen were out to lunch!

Such happy times in the studio with his booming little voice making announcements of his progress and asking occasional questions!  Why are he and Bethy growing up so fast?

Julie's Birthday: Bethy's Beads and Sparklies!

From my friend Cynthia's post about Driftwood and Glass Beads here, Bethy was inspired to start a little project making sun catchers.  In fact, when I showed her the post, her face lit up and she became immediately excited.  With her mom's birthday coming up the first week of February, this sparkly project seemed perfectly right to brighten the January brown and rainy grey around us.  And there was the snow . . .

First afternoon:  Getting started.

I drilled holes in a piece of driftwood (from a large basket of small, interesting pieces I found in Etsy seller DriftwoodAmour's shop) while she finished her homework on Thursday,  After that she was on to the bead selection process.  While I normally use small seed beads (sizes 11˚ and 15˚)  and their equally small cousins (Rocailles, 3mm bugles, pearls and anything else small and interesting) in my embroidery, I have accumulated some larger ones along the way just because they are beautiful.  I showed Bethy where to find the jars and bottles holding those larger faceted crystals and drops and twisted bugles, and she arranged them in little crescent-shaped "bone china" dishes and bowls so she could make a better selection.  We even found a pink Owl bead that delighted her, because her mom is fond of owls.  That left only the lovely "job" of stringing the beads together.  We have four weeks.  We can do this!

Second afternoon:  The Sun Catcher is taking shape.

By Friday, she was really into the swing of it.  Unfortunately, playing with the beads became almost as interesting as selecting them for the seven dangling strands.  But by the time Julie came to pick them up that afternoon, Bethy was working on the sixth strand.  She is so serious as she works, but in a happy way.  When I sit beside her, she is talking to the beads, singing to them, asking them questions and telling them little stories.  How wonderful to be nine years old ("I'm almost ten, you know," she will sometimes say)!

Third afternoon:  Beginning the Birthday Card.

On the following Monday, she finished stringing the main body of the glittery Sun Catcher.   Happy Feet!

Fourth afternoon:  The hanger.

It was not until Thursday that she added the beads to the looped hanger, which might have been her favorite part of the process.  The beads are glass leaves and differently-sized seed beads that wind around the handle like a colorful vine.

The next step was to start the birthday card for her mom, which she will finish in the weeks leading up to the event.  Cards are a huge, very thoughtful endeavor on her part, and they sometimes take hours and hours to finish-- real little gems (forgive my punning!).  They always have a little story, and are so sweetly illustrated.

What a privilege it is to be part of her life!

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 . . .