Off the Wall, Part One

The sewing projects that I started about this time last year are at last off my design wall. I feel very satisfied about Pinball, which will be my contribution to Kaffe and Liza's 2016 quilt book and that I introduced here.

Satisfied schmatisfied, I am downright ecstatic about it! And I want to try this concept again for myself, unencumbered by the fabric choices dictated by the marketing gods. (I believe you art folks call that "working in a series.")  It has always been something floating on the horizon of what interests me, the idea of staying contained within one design form and exploring how much further I can use it to express myself.

The felted wool birds (no link: my blog is littered with them) have also just taken flight off the wall.  I thought they would like it here:

 

But they seem to prefer it here.

 

Guess they're like all the other birds in the neighborhood, suckers for Himself's latest contribution to aviary public housing. The open house has been going on for a few weeks but it appears that a nice young finch couple has moved in to the yellow center hall colonial over the weekend.

I am stitching the last bits down on the outside border with an old woven Kaffe Fassett plaid fabric that I earned by cleaning out Liza's studio.  The pattern includes 96 wool berries on the outside border. Mine are currently very happy lolling about in a ever-so-juicy basket by Patricia Spangler...

...and they will stay there as I finish my creative visualization exercise. Specifically, I am visualizing me, stitching down wool berries with wool thread, onto a heavy wool blanket draped across my lap as temperature begins to climb into the 90s....

My last project, the One Block Wonder for the wedding couple, is also off the wall and on its way to the machine quilter. It simply is not my style and the less said (or shown), the better.

Oh, right, as if I could stick with saying less about anything.

Its just that I learned a valuable lesson: while the notion of making a gift may be heartfelt (and it was) the gift itself must also be part of the maker's creative heart as much as her hand (it wasn't).

Anyway, three projects that kept me company for the past year are now winding their ways out of my life. I am happy to once again be starting a dating relationship with this:

We're taking it very slow, since neither of us wants to repeat our the mistakes of our past.

Which brings me to Off the Wall, Part Two. Its about the other walls in my house and why I want my kids to get off of them.  But it is now Friday night, Shabbat descends and I am going to go to synagogue, sit in the front row with E, admire Rabbi Diana's dancing eyes and lime shoes...

and feel satisfied and grateful for it all.

Shabbat Shalom.

Tweets

No, not those. I can't do anything in 140 characters.

But I can do a lot with 30 characters. These 30 in particular:

 

I still have the vines and 97 circles of the border left, as well as sewing on tiny buttons in each of their eyes, once the quilting is done. But it doesn't feel the same. I am strangely homesick for the process of bringing these little critters to life in all their frippery. Its strange not to be embroidering hair on something.

Billy, come.

Back to the Birds

Oddly enough, while my soul was going through the spiritual laundromat, my hands have been busy with the simplest of stitches.

Or maybe it is not so odd.

I made this little window hanging to help remind a dear one of her intention, which is to be more like the sun in the lives of those around her.

 And of course I am still having a love affair with my birds, who now are six.

I took the time to learn how to do the fancy-shmancy embroidery stitches Sue Spargo recommends in the pattern. I am shocked, shocked I say, by how much I love doing all this intricate stuff since I tend to think of myself as the proverbial bull in the needlecraft shop.   But look how much personality they give to my flock:

Drizzle stitch make hair!

Pistil stitch makes a garden

Woven picot stitch makes beaks

Bullion knots make...well, whatever this is.

And just in case you're keeping track, I have 208 of the 276 octagons I need for the wedding one-block wonder completed. I am counting on winter camp for the rest. Ok, gotta go, off to the dentist to replace a cap that just can't handle the amount of Atomic Fireballs I eat.

Of Spectrum and Circle

This summer, I haven't been able to sustain focus on new classes. But I have birthed three stitching projects. They seem to be at varied points along the creativity spectrum, which suits my variable mood these days.

The mood? Well, it can be best illustrated in one freeze frame from last Monday.  There's me, in the consulting room with a veterinary cardiologist--yes, there is such a thing and get your ass back here, I'm not the kind of person who spends money on a dog cardiologist for no reason and while it seems to stun new graduates of veterinary school, I for one do not confuse medical intervention for an animal with that which might be appropriate for, say, the President of the United States. In wartime.

Anyway, she is explaining why Clutch has been completely lethargic and fatigued by the least bit of activity. I'm fiercely trying to grab hold of her words through my shock when my cell phone rings. Its my dad. He is at HIS cardiologist, trying to find out why HE has been completely lethargic and fatigued by the least bit of activity.

Thank god my mother refuses to go to doctors.

Its all circle of life stuff, really. The circle has turned the beloved grown-ups of my childhood into the old folks of my adulthood. And it will keep turning, until they turn into only my memories. The circle turns for the dog of my heart, who took his place there from the beloved dog before him...who had hopped onto the circle as the beloved dog before her slipped off...

That's how it goes. That's why our eyes leak when we hear The Circle Game or The Circle of Life. Once, I couldn't bear to look at The Circle. But looking at it face forward this really holds me steady. So does staying at home with needle and thread. Which, lucky for you, brings me back to my projects.

On the distant end of the creativity spectrum is the quilt I am making for our family's newlyweds-to-be. They chose a pattern called "One Block Wonder," where you take a busy print fabric like this:

 ...and then you slice and dice and julienne it into little triangles, which magically line up into a bevy of rather dramatic octagons that remind me of the June Taylor Dancers on the Jackie Gleason show:

Actually, its not so much magic as a whole lot of sewing. That part isn't so much fun, but it works when I want to duck and cover. Each octagon is different and completely unpredictable, so it is fun to see what materializes as I run the last of 8 seams through the machine. The creative part will come when its time to move all the completed octagons into a grand design.

Which necessitates completing the octagons...and the 4 small squares that go with each octagon, which themselves are made of 4 triangles.  The queen-sized quilt will take about 270 of these little buggers and I have 132. (Sing to the tune of 99 bottles of beer on the wall...)

Project Number 2 lies in the middle of the creativity spectrum. It is a felted wool wall hanging I am making for myself because it makes me smile.  And it will cover the holes in the plaster wall that appeared after I rearranged all the art in two rooms. It too is based on a pattern, but I do get to choose all the colors for all the bits and pieces. And I am doing all the stitching by hand with some newfound embroidery stitches. There's color everywhere. The squares start like this:

  When they get a bit older, they start to look like this:

When they're all grown up, they will look like this:

My third project doesn't involve anyone else. It requires all my creativity, which is probably why it is languishing at the moment. When I came home from Dorothy Caldwell's class, I stitched bunches of tiny scraps together, like this:

One morning, they too had regrouped. More three-card monte than June Taylor, though.

I've been kantha'ing this intermittently. I've lost my way with it, I think because I can't seem to hear it telling me anything. Could the addition of a clothesline make it laundry? Is it an aerial view of a busy beach? Anyone?