Spring Bulbs In Bloom

They would not listen to me.  I tried.  In the unseasonably warm spell (and that is a mild way of describing our winter temperature ups and downs and rains), the spring bulbs began to emerge.  I thought the green might be the end of it and the buds could be spared for March.  Not so.  Despite all my talk and pleading, those silly bulbs not only poked through the earth, but they bloomed last month.  Now, thanks to the return of more seasonable weather, they are brown and withered and pretty much past photographing.  They just wouldn't listen.  This photo records their brief heyday.

And, thousands more are just like this-- spring gone woefully wrong.  I wonder what all those hundreds of bulbs whose leaves came up but didn't bloom will do in early March?  Should I be fertilizing in January?  What sort of gardening year is taking shape?

Aaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuggggggggghhhhhhhh!!!!

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!

"TOO MUCH" Reconsidered

All those bags of fabric going out of the studio have given me the shakes.  I asked Charles not to carry them off just yet, and his look spoke volumes about his assessment of my mental condition.

In fairness to me, I have just received a new book, How to make your own freeform quilts, and our author makes the point that fabrics that are old or ugly are excellent for this technique!  Old and Ugly would describe those five bags very well.  Jill was right to discourage me from casting these pearls out.

I love quilts that look as if they were sewn together between chores and cooking meals and burping babies, with no thought to color or design, and particularly if there are long, wavy strips involved.  This book is all about uneven strips of fabric.  I sat reading that first night, and when I turned the bedside light off, visions of my rotary cutter, sharpened and at the ready, with piles of fabric lined up for chopping, "danced through my head. . ."

Despite all the things I should have been doing, there was to be no peace until I had at least tried this idea.  My inner child was whining, and ever the undisciplined mother, I gave in.  I made, by reaching for the nearest thing at hand, these four coasters/mug mats.  You will notice that these are not really ugly fabrics.  I was not deep into the five bags of give-aways at the time I started this.

I can hear your groaning over the satin stitches at the edge.  I will confess that I have made a zillion coasters over the years, and the part that is always ugly to me is the strip of seam binding to finish off the edges.  The nicely put-together coasters suddenly go from usefully flat to un-usefully lumpy edged, the sort of thing that isn't safe for sitting narrow-base glasses on for even a moment.  I have voile, but voile doesn't really hide too much, does it?

There is always the possibility of reconstruction, however, because these are 5" squares, leaving open the door to finding that perfect binding and chopping off the satin stitches.

Basically, I think I need a larger project to make wavy-lined stripes.  "Larger Project" is not really a part of my vocabulary, so I am thinking about this.  Thinking hard.

Meanwhile, I am studying another quilt I pieced together before the holidays, trying to think of a way to bind this more formal piece.  Black and White and Red always look so modern, don't they?  I'll take it with me to Freestyle in January.  Two of the very best quilters in the state will be there, Tone and Sheila, and I shall ask their advice!

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!

Christmas, 2011

As I did not get these photos loaded in a timely manner, I take you, belatedly, through a few little parts of my Christmas home.  The Adorables helped to decorate the tree, Jordan was so kind as to move furniture in the sun room to make room for the Hogwarts Express (which Ethan and Granddad put together so charmingly), and Charles carried boxes up and down the steps for what must have seemed like miles to him.

It is so nice to find ornaments again, reminders of Christmases past, and though there are some things still missing, they MUST be here somewhere.  There is something very soothing about finding misplaced objects after years of searching, so I shall look forward to next year's Christmas for the treasures that may be uncovered.  There are some badly labeled boxes in the garage and storage room!

Here we see Charles reading "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" to the children (of all sizes) Christmas Eve at Jordan and Julie's house:

He really enjoyed the role of the Grinch just a wee bit too much, as Julie must have realized:

Back home, the tables had been set for three days, and I changed the centerpieces, chose other glasses, moved napkins and discarded first and second choices . . .

On the mantel we collected the snowmen.  I had no idea I collected them, but as the boxes were opened, an entire community of little snowpeople emerged!

Around and about, some favorite decorations.  These three angels date from about 1970, about the time Jordan popped into the world.  They are a gift from his Grandmother, Celina, after I had admired hers.  She toned hers down with a good wipe of dark stain, but ever the bright-color aficionada, I left mine to flaunt their (now) retro style down the years.  They have every nuance of the 60s-70s, except to have "Flower Power" and "Love" written on them somewhere!  I have never ceased to love these paper maiché dears:

And I will never give away my old glass ornaments, no matter how shabby they become:

The lovely beaded curtain was made by Marge Courville, and these two little guys seem as taken by it as I am!

And so Christmas came, the family assembled, we ate and exchanged gifts, and now the New Year has been rung in.  Life as it should be lived!

Studio Notes: "TOO MUCH" Defined

"TOO MUCH" of a good thing is too much.  I never thought I'd say that.  But the studio is in need of a good organizing, so I have started sorting (again).  As I cannot do much because of the constant cough and the sleepiness from the meds, it is a slow go.  But, four large—no, five large bags have gone out of the studio, and this is only a start.

Getting rid of things is only a beginning, however.  I need a new way of seeing.  My fabric cabinet has, for years, been a beautifully organized collection of shelves (the cabinet used to be a medicine cabinet in a hospital, built of oak, with narrow upper shelves and a base of deep proportions with a zinc mixing shelf).  It has been so beautifully organized, in fact, that I scarcely see it any more—it doesn't excite my imagination the way the rows of folded fabrics did in the beginning.  So all the fabrics came down for a good look-through.  I found fabrics there that I had used in the 70s and 80s when I first began quilting.  Dated?  Some are probably worth big bucks, now (*smile*)!  Especially the scraps from the clothes Mother made for us and herself when we were children.  Some really screaming "Mod" prints.

And there are the country flowers and hearts.  Small prints, the sort of thing to make doll's clothes from.  Might come in handy later on . . . but if I said this the first time, I would open the door to the merest shuffling things around, getting rid of nothing.

I meant for all of this to go to Good Will, but Jill said that Good Will did not really need our scraps, nor did they treasure little pieces of fabulous fabric the way we did.  Obviously, Jill is not the person to encourage me to continue with my clean-out.

But I know of someone who is giving her little daughter a sewing machine for Christmas, and having a couple of bags of fabric to practice cutting out and sewing and trying out all the stitches— that could be a really fun thing for a child!

Meanwhile, I kept two small boxes of bits and pieces, as I never use very large pieces of anything.  Only two boxes!  In a pile on the floor are things for projects— curtains for the studio, covers for the ironing boards and presser, some old clothes for Bethy to play dress-up in (REALLY old, some of these) . . .

My embroidery thread needed to be out where I could see it better.  So, I dragged drawers of it into the light and spilled it into a huge  wooden bowl.  Now I don't have to stop and open drawers and work with my color-organized bobbins to find a thread.  I can engage in the most soothing of occupations:  just fingering the bowl of beautiful threads and stitching.  No point to this stitching, no design, simply the in and out of the needle in the fabric, watching the line of stitch develop across the linen.  It can be good stitching, or it can be bad.  There is no standard here.  I stitch for the sheer love of the stitches.  When I'm done, I feel better, I can toss the stitching away or I can keep it (mostly it is tossed), and I move on to the next thing on my list.  I liken this to visiting a Day Spa for a short pick-me-up, but without having to dress and leave the house.

Then on to the fabrics or the "Surprise!" bags that have been hiding in corners, some for very, very long times.  An examination of the contents, some soulful delineation of the useful and the never-to-be-used-again, and, voiles!  A teeny-weeny bit more space!

Doing this not-so-difficult job makes me feel better.  If I was in the house sleeping on the sofa or whining in my chair by the fireplace, I would not accomplish anything but I would continue to think about all the things I was not getting done.  It is that horrible Puritan Work Ethic that spoils everything—even a nice opportunity for a lie-in on a rainy day.

The Pink Scarf

Color can set my fingers to flying and my mind to reeling!  Fingers and mind were both fully engaged this morning as I worked in a delirium of excitement to make this scarf for Bethy (Christmas).

It is so hard to explain how color affects me.  I realized, when I was in my 20s, that I hear music in colors (or see colors when I hear music), and decades later found the word for it:  Synesthete.  When I am working in the studio with music playing, I sometimes turn it off so I can lay out my colors for a project.  In the silence, I can "hear" the colors better.  Once I'm satisfied with the lay-out, I can go back to whatever music I was listening to.  Hard to explain.

I got up at four a.m. this morning and thought about the colors I would use for this project, then went into the studio (the short walk in the wet dark was a quick wake-up!) and got started on it.  I listened to the news (NPR) while I worked— occasionally the musical interludes would interfere, but the "mute" button solved that problem.  By half-past eleven I had finished the scarf, and was giddy with the results.  Beads, two dozen differently textured and colored yarns, and the simple single crochet stitch— what a great way to start the morning!

Why isn't it possible to make a living with baizillions of tints and hues of thread and a hook?   Oh, right— the economic bottom line. . .

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.

A Return to Alphabets: G as in . . .

Back to the embroidered alphabet, after a long interlude of silence.  I couldn't find my "G" from my stack of alphas, and I let it bring the Alphabet Project to a halt.  So, just imagine it is here.  I'll post it one day.  Or make a new one.  Life is never a straight line . . . except in Grids, maybe . . .

Grids.  Dividing a space into sections (not necessarily equal-sized) can organize a space with remarkable ease and add a great deal of clarity to the grouping.  Precisely measured divisions can still be fun, though.  Grids are satisfying ways to present ideas.  Some examples I've pulled from studio storage boxes are:

Blue Grid.  How many different ways can you fill a square (or, a roughly square shape)?  Inspired by the Beaney and Littlejohn Stitch Magic, I used color to tie together an assortment of fillings for squares in a roughly 1 1/4" format:

Green Grid.  The grid is machine embellished wool, and the fillings are all whimsical.  This was part of a Freestyle Challenge from Cynthia on developing grids:

This grid is a response to a Freestyle challenge by Beth, and is a study in stitch and color set in this tight form:

Below is my blue "quilt."  It is a true mixed-media piece of gridwork, and was a delight to put together.  Many of the squares have hand-made paper as a background:

These last grids are photographs from a trip to Savannah.  Old cities have some of the most interesting photo ops.  The first is a sidewalk in front of one of the SCAD buildings, and the second is a collection of mirrors arranged on the walls of a little shop on a side street in the historic district:

Grasshoppers.  Really silly grasshoppers.  In fact, they only resemble grasshoppers if you squint a little bit and forget anything you may have learned in a biology class about insects.  I was playing with ideas while doodling one day.

Of other "G" words that come to mind, "gardens" pops up first.  Gardens and Flowers are (traditionally) the embroiderer's most cherished subject-- but my "F" post probably hammered that point home, so I'll give it a rest.

What I have learned about French Knots

Today, when I was squeezing yet one more long-stemmed French Knot into a smallish corner of a palm-sized piece, it occurred to me that I ought to write about knots before I forget everything I've learned!  This concern for my memory of both the important and the unimportant came about when it took me an entire day to remember the name of the very common Feather Stitch!  Celebrating birthdays is suddenly not such a celebratory moment.

I have learned that knots are tricky and unforgiving.  I get one chance at them, and if I garble the line of thread at any point, I don't have the opportunity to back out of the mess and start over.  My options are:  (a) cut it out c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y and start over; (b) sew another stitch (a bigger knot, or a satin stitch shape) on top of it in a fatter thread until the unfortunate knotted mess is completely covered up; or (c) come up with a creative appliqué.  Usually I opt for (a), though I can point out several cover-ups that actually changed the direction of the piece entirely!  I think my Muse is often impatient with me and resorts to tangling the threads I am using until I am forced to stop and listen to her.

Yes, another digression.

French Knots have no more personality than a dial tone when they stand by themselves, but in a cluster, or stretched across a space, they can have presence and even textural importance.  I love texture, so I am prone to wrap the needle many times, giving me a large, sometimes shaggy knot.  Jacqueline Enthoven, however, says a French Knot should be wrapped only one time around the needle.  If I want a larger knot, she continues, I should simply double the thread.  Or treble, it would follow.  So, the next thing I learned about French Knots is that when I double the thread and wrap the needle only once, the shape of the knot is tidy and it does not fall over to one side.  It is possible that the multiple-wraps leave the stitch exhausted under the weight of all those loops and they fall gasping to one side the way Victorian ladies took to their fainting couches.

French Knots have a habit of disappearing when I do not move my needle over just slightly as I enter the fabric from the right side to carry the thread to the back.  In fact, they simply pop right through the little hole they sit above and I'm left looking at the place where the knot was and wondering where my stitch has gone!

Most fortunately, French Knots play well with other stitches.  Stitches that make long, winding lines across the linen and leave open pockets in the process cry out for companionable French Knots to join them.   Look at the Herringbone stitch.  In other embroiderers' worlds, they are nicely even and controlled little children.  In my world, they run, leap, curl and change shapes as they cavort across the linen:

This rather chubby Cretan Stitch benefits from a French Knot in its house-shaped center:

Buttonhole stitches, particularly uneven ones, provide interesting "cubby holes" for the knots, and they almost look like cells as seen under a microscope when multiple rows are combined.  Square (or Open) Chain stitches read the same way:

Small, tightly-made knots may be cradled in the curve of Feather or Fly Stitch, or decorate the ends, like some of the more delicate weeds in my garden:

Here the knot has been used as a substitution for the terminating straight stitch normally found at one end of a Detached Chain stitch:

These slightly open Detached Chain stitches also use the knot as a tacking stitch:

Two lines of Buttonhole stitches have been "dotted" with French Knots in contrast colors:

In a pinch, French Knots can appliqué a shape to a ground fabric with delightful results,

and their high-texture makes for interesting filling stitches--tree foliage is well-represented in variegated thread here:

It is even possible to stitch small knots into larger ones.  These below are pale blue perle cotton #8 sewn into the darker perle cotton #3:

By adding a stem to the knot, the lowly French Knot becomes a tiny flower:

With the help of metallic thread, the knot can have loops added to it, as well (it is tension that makes this work, tension and the patience of Job):

The long-stemmed version can be turned into an edging or border by alternating the direction of the stem and knot, as in the pale blue row that slopes to the right,

and when clustered tightly together can give the appearance of small colonies of fungi or field flowers:

There are so many more ways to use French Knots-- and this is the simplest of all the knots.

I have also learned how lovely the complicated knots can be, but I believe that will wait for another day and another pot of tea.  Right now, I have a huge box of samplers spread across a table in the studio, and rather than putting them away, I want to go and sit with them and enjoy remembering the times I made them.  Stitched samplers can be ever so entertaining!

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 . . .

Fashion In The Studio!

These are my feet in my Studio Slippers.  The slippers were a gift from my very thoughtful daughter-in-law, Julie, from Christmas past.  The toes have the most wonderful felted flowers on them— they make me smile each time I step into them!  After the comfort and sheer fun of these felted slippers, it would make no sense at all to go into my fiber studio and wear common, every-day shoes!

Of course, the shoes are only part of the fun.  Another component of my high-fashion aesthetic is my Studio Apron.  This I wear for cover-up when I'm doing really messy things.  Painting fabric, most particularly.  I bought the plain canvas apron years ago, when I was still teaching at the Campbell Folk School, and every year I added some embroidery, painting, or beading to it.  The Studio Apron became a part of the entire Folk School experience for me.

You might abstract from these photos that my dress code is a little off-the-wall.  You would be absolutely correct.

Invaded!

I awakened early this morning and stumbled to the kitchen for tea.  It was not yet 5:00 a.m.  Planning on going out to the studio, I flipped on the patio lights— and almost had a stroke!  The patio looked as if it was filled with raccoons!  I opened the kitchen door and for a moment the beasties looked at me as if they thought this was going to be a conversational moment.  I grabbed the broom and set out after them, counting four that I could see and noticing things moving in the shadows that might have been more.  I was proud of myself.  Even my grandmother, a woman who wielded a broom with deadly grace and accuracy, could not have done a finer job of clearing the lower terrace than I.

I thought about the movie, "Over the Hedge," and a little voice that sounded remarkably like R.J. (the Troublemaking Raccoon) was saying, "We'll be back . . ."

Of course, I will now wake up at 4:30 every morning and come to the kitchen to check on the critters out back.  As there is no garbage can there, I can only surmise they are coming for my bulbs.  As the Phantom of the Opera declared, "Then, it shall be war between us!"

P.S. added Monday, 28th of November:  Last night I was up again in the wee hours, and the sound of the rain on the roof was interrupted by a brick being dragged across the patio.  I jumped up from the sunroom sofa and ran to the window, turned on outside lights, but I could not bring myself to take up the umbrella and go out into the weather to chase down this 2:00 a.m. noise.  I think, now that the sun is up, that it was the raccoons again.  One of the bricks holding down the tarp over the fountain outside the sunroom window has been disturbed.

How do you get rid of wild animals you DON'T want in your yard without hurting the ones you DO want?

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.