Tag Archives: applique

narrative quilting and viewing

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A summer story emerges.

It has some specificity – THIS August there will in fact, be a blue moon.  This summer, cloth has hung on a string strung out back, not tree to post or house to post, but deck to mini-ramp.  Still…

The rabbit in the quilt really does visit our yard, even when eight of us are having BBQ and salad at the table under one of the catalpa trees.

And the results of my indigo ventures are evident – nearly all of the blue fabric in this piece were dipped in the five gallon bucket out back.  Some were bleached as well.  I have fallen in love with the color of indigo, and more surprisingly, with the metallic smell it imparts to cloth.

I have been stitching to a boxed DVD set from library called, “Why Quilts Matter” (more on that another time) and in the evenings to Showtime’s series: The Tudors.  Both K & I loved Hilary Mantel’s ‘Wolf Hollow’ and are psyched that its sequel now resides on our kindles… I’ll probably save that read for winter (and it may consume most of the winter!).  ‘The Art of Fielding’ is a perfect tale for the end of summer, and some compensation for not sleeping until 2:30.

This week I watched ‘In the Electric Mist‘ twice.  It is a post-Katrina murder thriller set in Louisiana.  It stars Tommy Lee Jones and is based on a book by James Lee Burke.  My sister turned me on to James Lee Burke.  They are good reads all on their own, but are particularly interesting to me because I am currently obsessed with southern landscapes.  I especially wanted to see one of his books on film to confirm what I found disappointing in the wonderful new movie, ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’ – and that is, that ITS landscapes were repetitive and washed out instead of marvelously tangled and varied and intensely blue and green.  (The relationships and characters of the ‘Beasts’ film more than made up for my disappointment about the scenery).

Today I include my viewing notes because it has struck me recently that perhaps I stitch in order to sit and watch one narrative after another on the screen, and not the other way around! Has anyone else ever had this slightly disturbing epiphany?

happy weekend

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I woke to the sound of rain, plop-plip-plopping down.  It made me happy.  It cooled the air significantly and refreshed all the plants.  I sat and read the opening to “The Art of Fielding”, which I will read after I finish the second Hunger Games book.

A busy day, with a visit to my sister, laundry, and the gathering of winter garb for Montreal-bound C., but wanted to share a quick picture.

I can’t wait to show you how this is coming along.  The little teeny garments are stitched down and there is now a clothes line, and pegs!  The tree trunk received a covering of brown-ochre cotton and there is another clothes line on the other side of the house.

Is this so much fun because it is akin to playing with paper dolls, I wonder?!

the house is open

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The house is open, and hot, and airless, but still it is preferable to the AC.

A cute bunny added to an otherwise unpopulated piece ought to inspire something besides my own sense of being derivative.  I may just have to give her time. And what about the dragonflies, you ask?!

My best moments, of late, come in the basement… where there is no season, no tide or influence, just stuff wanting to be chucked, folded, or assembled.  It’s cool down there.  Scraps that I saved got stitched into this assembly this morning.  The pink handmade paper (center) dates back to when we renovated our house.  Stuffed in the walls of the old kitchen were newspapers… I saved them, whirred them up in a blender and pulled them into sheets.  Ads for clothing and rugs for sale in Framingham.  Words that had been in the walls.  This batch might have been made with four year olds at C’s nursery school (clue? the pink sparkles).  THAT tells me the paper is 14 years old.

Another year, I fed acetate through the inkjet & made copies of a collage featuring fingers pressing into dough from a food magazine.  Back then I was thinking about craft and money, wondering about it.  I am still wondering about it.  There were stars from an antique map of the constellations and fires from Providence, but you can’t really see them now.

Allen Ginsburg never did it for me, but I suppose I have to mention him, what with  ‘howl’ and all.  I printed HOWL onto cloth and acetate at a time when you couldn’t (and you STILL can’t) escape the words DREAM TRUST CREATE BELIEVE, like we are all four years old and waiting for Santa.

I like the photographed, ink stitches lining up with the thread stitches.

I can’t keep my blog up to date with the work that I am doing.  I guess that is a good thing, but it has a way of feeling heavy, too.

After quoting the bible yesterday, I was wondering if I ought to express my protests about homophobia in this country, just in case people got the wrong idea.

Nah, it’s too hot to protest.  I’m going back to this table, hopefully to stitch myself into a better mood.

ongoing ark

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This is Ark Redux.  Neither the buyer nor I could stand the gloom of round one.  Now, the silk chiffon ‘rain’ is limited by the insertion of a brighter, focus panel behind the ark.  I didn’t double the chiffon this time, so it’s a paler shade of grey. And, there will be a dove.

 

Smaller dimensions were also requested – which is a boon to the process of lap quilting!  Some folds and junctures between fabrics are left ‘open’ during basting, in order to allow the insertion of paler fabrics.

I was thoughtful enough to stitch the windows onto the ark prior to assemblage.  Why?  Because a needle stitching in that area will now be passing through three or four layers of top fabric (and one of them batik) plus backing and batting.

The yellow silk version was rejected after my husband in passing asked, “Is that supposed to be the sun?”  Well, no, but thank you for letting me know that the yellow isn’t working!

Noah’s Ark

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For my next commission — a wall quilt featuring Noah’s Ark — I purchased some stormy, raining fabric.  It’s a beautiful silk chiffon, and I will double it to make the rain going in two directions, and to make the greys tend toward black.

I don’t often specifically buy fabric with a project in mind, but this time, I did.
I think it will take a needle nicely, even doubled, so I look forward to quilting this.  I will use the technique taught by Jude to secure the layers first — what she calls an ‘invisible baste’.  I have learned that securing the layers as an initial matter makes the difference between enjoying all subsequent hand stitching, and not.  I have an old plastic place mat from when the boys were little to put under the piece while I baste  — this prevents stitching the quilt to one’s skirt and helps steady the layers until they are secured with thread.
With hand-stitching in mind, I selected a high quality quilting cotton for the back.  Maybe it’s the heat.  Maybe it’s growing older (not wanting to stress already achy-thumbs).  Maybe it’s a growing appreciation for the ENERGY of a thing.  Whatever the reason, I find myself refusing to work with fabric that is icky in any way (I used to stockpile icky (free) fabric for the backs of quilts…).  Almost anything that I have purchased at JoAnn’s is going into my give-away bin.  The stuff they sell is crap.
What do you think of, visually, when you think of Noah’s Ark?  I think we tend to see the boat up on stilts, being built, or to imagine the procession of animals, marching two-by-two into the boat.  I decided to depict the middle of the storm – think:  Day 20 or 22 of the forty days and nights of rain.  No cute beasts marching up a plank.  No hopeful dove with a sprig of greenery in her beak.
Initially, I wanted to surround the ocean/boat scene with animal prints, but no matter how I laid them out, they looked dopey.  So I found a woven rectangle with watery colors, split it up and laid it out, and then wove another section to fill in the remaining areas.  I am stitching this newly woven section this afternoon, and will cut it up later.
I like how the woven sections add depth and complexity – very comparable to how certain spices or oils create depth of flavor in a stew.  These sections take a considerable amount of time, but they have a defined beginning, middle, and end, which keeps them from becoming oppressive.  And since I am planning this quilt out, no woven section will be laid on top of a section that is already three or four layers thick. Again, my goal is for the hand stitching to be easeful.
I will lay some of the sheer silk chiffon on the ocean fabrics, to create a feeling of light or foam.

My hope is to ‘whip this up’ in such a way that I feel good about what I can charge for it.  Price can never be the sole consideration, mind you, but it would be nice (for a change) if my aim to pursue an efficient design and construction actually panned out.