Category Archives: online learning

sedum bowing from the rain

13 Replies

Everybody knows that big game cats kill their targeted prey some very small percent of the time, right?  (It might be as low as 15%).

I thought of that (half-remembered) fact photographing the sedum this morning.  They are bowed down from last night’s rain.  It really came down hard for awhile, and they bear signs of repeated pummeling.

Still, they soak up the sunlight and afford bees their nectar like any other day.

Do they wring their petals with self-blame because they are not standing upright?! Thinking to themselves, “I am so weak, so bad, so stupid” ?  Of course not!  Sedum can’t wring their petals!!

Just kidding.  Even on a day not particularly marked by self-doubt, I like to remember that fact about cats. We think of them as such mighty hunters – and THEY ARE – but they fail more than half the time!! Imagine how much poorer their kill rate would be if they berated themselves for all those misses?!! What if when I was bowed down, I could still soak up the sun just like any other day?  Absent the narrative?

I am also interested in the FENCE in this picture.  Over at Spirit Cloth, where I am taking another cloth class, I have asserted the house as my motif (what? again?) and noticed that, unlike wings (Jude Hill’s chosen motif), houses are about enclosures, security and shelter.  So different from flight, freedom, and expansion.  But, the house sits on a parcel of land… and that has an edge too.  So, there is something to expand to from the edges of a house.  Or, there is a secondary enclosure.

Kind of thinking out loud here.

In what ways does a HOUSE bring freedom? 

And, if a house does or does not afford freedom, why?  What does it depend on — who lives inside?  where the fences are — if there are any? the foundation?

Apron and Mickey

6 Replies
apron-and-mickey by dee at clothcompany

Here’s the apron I referenced the other day, back when it was just a bunch of woven strips attached to a rectangle of linen. I am wearing it now. It works.

For an apron to work for me, it MUST have strings long enough to tie in front, so that I can tuck a dish towel into it. Pockets unnecessary.

For the many quilters and fiber artists out there who make work as gifts or to sell, how do you know when something’s A KEEPER?

I knew I wanted this for myself, but sometimes I DON’T. One way to turn something I haven’t admitted I want to keep into a keeper is to price it too high. Ha!

P.S.  This apron combines the learning from two Jude Hill classes (Spirit Cloth) — Cloth to Cloth and Contemporary Boro.

don’t think too much

10 Replies

‘Don’t think too much’ is a pretty good philosophy.

Just finished “The Art of Fielding” where the story follows an incredibly gifted athlete who learns the hard way about how thinking too much can intercept and poison talent.   Thought can interfere with one’s craft as well.  Studying, plodding along, reworking, while essential components of completing work, are often not enough to resolve a project in a satisfactory way.

Which is why I pin works-in-progress to quilts that are already on the wall — so that I can look at them while doing the dishes, or talking on the phone, or while exiting the house in a mad dash.  You get different ideas and solutions at those times, and they seem to come without trying.

This woven cloth is going to become an apron.  Why?  Because last night, after pausing in my stitching, I laid it in my lap.  K. and I were watching a VERY long movie (“Henry Fool”), waiting for it to end, honestly, and I noticed that I really liked having the cloth there.  In my lap.  It seemed to belong there.

So, even though I never would have set out to turn this rectangle of linen into an apron HAD I THOUGHT ABOUT IT, I think it’ll be a really nice one. And a keeper.

Have you made any surprise decisions with a work-in-progress lately?

P.S.  “Don’t think too much” happens to be a good mantra for the days following dropping a first born at college!  In service of not thinking too much, my house is probably going to get pretty clean this week.  A tiny compensation for C’s absence.

Elegance

4 Replies

Stitching a hanging rope and a bamboo skewer into the top hem of a little wall quilt feels elegant for some reason.

20120807-140857.jpg

phone picture from last night – sorry it isn’t more crisp

That rope will not slide or tug away, and the skewer will keep the piece (though small and somewhat stiff) from bowing.

I like the way the half-moon vintage doily rises above the top edge.

Part of this effort was inspired by Jude Hill‘s Heart Whispering class.  It is also a continuation of a 12 (or more) year-long exploration of hearts in cloth and thread.  What you can’t quite see in these pictures is that the sheer green Asian fabric features metallic inks.  Yesterday, as the day waned, those gilded areas caught the sun and glowed.

And since I don’t think I’ve posted any pictures of the indigo-dipped cloths that used lacrosse balls as resists, here are a couple of more pictures.

And another.

many hearts

9 Replies

A couple of heart and strip-weaving samplers to share.  When I compare the largely off-white piece (above) with the chaotic, colored one I was stitching on last night (below),
I feel a (new?) preference for the blank spaces, the more subtle textures, signaling a shift in taste, perhaps?  We shall see.  The piece above received this plaid heart, plus three others last night.  I added the orange batik stripe and the tea-dyed damask linen ribbon to ground the design a little.  During the applique process, I found myself wishing that my stitches were being received on a plainer surface where they might show up a little better…

The top piece features an eco-print by Arlee Barr.  It is almost too much to embellish it at all, if you know what I mean, but I tried to let the leaf prints hold their own next to the hearts.  And, look!  Is that a shadow heart to the right of the striped-heart?!!

Both pieces show off some cloth weaving learned in a Jude Hill class (blog, Spirit Cloth, on side bar), as well as some heart treatments learned in ANOTHER Jude Hill class.

Perhaps it is Monday-mind, but from where I sit right now, I just want to finish these up – chop chop – so that I can move on to other things.