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.
I can’t download today’s and yesterday’s pictures – probably because I made a video and something or other has to be installed first. Does this stuff get easier, I wonder?
So, in spite of the fact that I am reading “Platform” by Michael Hyatt and thinking my blog SHOULD be more fiber-focused, today I offer this photo. It is a Michael Mazur drawing, hung with five others… all of trees. Very free, powerful lines and shading. But what captivated me on the way in to the Regatta Bar to hear a friend’s son play jazz, was the way the reflection of hotel curtains and rug and inset lamps made an overlay design on the glass. This was MORE interesting to me, I’ll admit, than the nine remarkable blue and white antique quilts hanging not thirty feet away in the stairwell.
Should I be paying attention to this preference, somehow?
Also, I offer a long but compelling On Point interview. The interview is with Elizabeth Cline, who has written a book relevant to many of the things I have been thinking about lately. It is called, “Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion“. The blog link, “The Good Closet” further addresses some of the issues raised, chief among them – low, low wages for garment workers overseas; pollution; low quality clothing; the lost art of caring for our clothing.
SERIES. The new series is comprised of self portraits, any of which could be captioned: “me looking deranged”. This makes No. 2. (No. 1 in flickr stream recently). This well-loved Irish Linen dish towel (I think “linen” warrants a capital “L” here) was finally retired from its kitchen duties last night. COLLAR. A strip of the dish towel is being auditioned here as a collar on my boro work-in-progress (in Jude Hill’s Contemporary Boro class, online). Just like I enjoy the visual pun when my older son wears Old Navy garments with the words “Established 1994” (because HE was established in 1994), there is something fun about wearing the words, “Made In Ireland”, because even though I wasn’t, my ancestors were.
I THINK I am 100% Irish. Was always told this. But, my mother’s father was born and raised in Hartlepool, England and had a British accent, even when I knew him decades after his arrival on Ellis Island (I found a copy of his ship’s manifest on the wonderfully historic Ellis Island website). He (Albert Jacques) met his wife (Alice Healey) in Brooklyn, and her family haled from Co. Cork – but was my grandmother born in Brooklyn? Or in County Cork? I can’t seem to get a straight answer. My father’s parents were both Irish (Mallon and Kinney), but I don’t know when their arrivals to this country took place. Probably a generation or two before my grandparents, though. My father has a namesake on one of the rolls for the Civil War – one of the MANY (come to find out) William Kinneys who fought with the militia coming out of Pennsylvania.
But, back to the garment. The red disturbs my plan to stay monochromatic and since the fit of this thing is going to be problematic, I think I’ll force myself to stick to the blue plan. The sleeves may come off to convert the shirt to a vest if I can’t find a way to cinch the waist a little.
RAIN. The rain is making surfaces shine. The rain is making me appreciate shelter. The rain is making wonder how all the sleeveless prom attendees tonight will stay warm!!
SHELTER. Sometimes the places we find solace come to us unbidden, or as surprises. Like this spicebush.
Under the boughs of this bush-turned-tree, not only do I feel a sense of shelter, there is a hint of magic. My husband thinks it is perhaps ‘too big’ for its spot, but, though I prune aggressively every year, I will fight for its right to overcome our notion of what fits. It has umbrellaed up and out from the small twig I put in the ground years ago into a beautiful small tree that creates a tunnel toward our garage gate.
I love the way when I stand under it, everything that is so familiar looks different. How grateful I am for this fragrant, light-catching green, vigorous grower!
Gorilla glue on my fingertips from helping out with a science project last night (building a model of the levothyroxine molecule) means touching T-shirt knits and interfacing is horrible!! Everything is sticking to the dried glue remnants on my fingertips and feels awful, to boot! But, I have to keep at this T-shirt quilt. Have to. Have to.
Will google ‘gorilla glue removal’ and get back to it. Last night, though, I took the pocket and collar off of this workshirt and am going to apply woven strips to the sides of the front plackets.
Also, I cut the landscape panel off of the cardigan that I had been stitching. It wasn’t working. And, proof that it was the right thing to do? Now I love it. More on that later!
