Tag Archives: quilting

Woods, words, and stitch

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Discovered a new park. Less than two miles away!

Reading my book again. Primary take away: it’s really good and I shouldn’t give up (good thing that’s my takeaway because I checked Query Tracker this morning and there it was in red : 49 queries, 100% rejected). It’s also good to reread to catch more typos or content questions.

Mixing cowries and pawpaws? Must research a little more and then fix.

Still life. I’m gonna make a heart for myself. What do you think of that?

I continue to populate this one with windows and roof outlines. With all the dire climate news this and last week, part of me wants to either : fill in all blank areas with scarlet red stitches or surround the piece as is with some of the Global Warming sections I have downstairs. They’re full of hot colors, swirls for storm maps, out-of-control vegetation — all overstitched with words like “hoax” and “try raking the forest.”

What is THIS?
Sweetspire everywhere!

Happy fourth everyone! I may listen to Frederick Douglass’s speech as read by James Earl Jones over on YouTube later this afternoon.

Plaid door. Satin moon.

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After two zoom calls and a dog walk, I had the day to myself, and also the house. I enjoyed going between the ironing board in the living room and the bins of cloth in the basement. Up and down the stairs. It felt like getting back to something I’d been missing and didn’t know how much.

The buttons on this one are coming off — too much like eyes. Whimsical is okay but not distracting.

Composed years ago, this little house quilt was languishing in a pile.

Cloth: plaid flannel — one of the boys’ pjs; wool challis from a scarf that belonged to my mother; luscious indigo strip dyed by me years ago. I can’t remember who wore the dark shirt behind the house, but I’m pretty sure that I bought the vintage hankie (roof) on eBay once upon a time.

Auditioning my barn on a stormy background. The foreground is stitched already, which is the only sewing I managed to accomplish in California.

I just inserted that thread crumb moon this morning. If I keep it, I’ll work some purple into the foreground.

Speaking of not getting much done, I am tired today and don’t even feel like walking the dog.

Yellow arrives out front. Such a cheerful color, yellow!

A Pfizer Saturday

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Husband just shuttled down to Longwood medical area for his second shot. He had such a reaction to a recent shingles shot that he’s kind of expecting to be laid low for a day. We’ll see. Tylenol at the ready. My second is next weekend.

As you may know, it snowed here yesterday. This morning’s walk was cold, but mainly because we were underdressed. A chilly light rain falling on bare heads is no fun. Got my two and half miles in anyway.

As soon as K buzzed off, I spent a little time in my studio. It’s really been a while. I’m looking forward to hand-quilting this larger village quilt.

The happy accident of towers / woven strips finding each other is worth pursuing, I think. I’ll cut and weave into the yellow base near the buildings’ foundations and somehow resolve the areas where the white background ends too soon.

Sunny Saturday

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A walk around the lake with the guys. Down jacket on, but still nice air.

Notably absent: all the runners training for the Boston Marathon. Normally this time of year, they’d be everywhere. This year’s race will be in October.

Midday found me quilting and watching a show about Flannery O’Connor on American Masters. I knew she was a staunch Catholic and southern but I had no idea how ill she was with lupus.

I hear my neighbors chatting out back. I’ve been through quite a few chapters today and have to get back outside. It’s a little daunting, the page count.

Here’s how K and I do yard clean up: I rake leaves and whatnot into piles and he picks them up.

I close with two Paris Collage Collective Week 12 compositions that didn’t make it into my Instagram feed.

Adding light, revising novel

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I’m adding light and shadow to appliqued hawk. Made her head lighter and used white poly for beak to make it pop. A scrap of fabric practically fell out of the basket and felt like a minor show of Providence.

Jude had the idea over on Instagram to darken some of the ripples around the hawk’s head. Since I like the way it adds a sense of motion, I may continue around the body as long as I have that color thread. It’ll look good flowing off the wings.

Had some gross polyester swirled with black in that basket, too. Added to tail and wings for more contrast. Light. Maybe you can see a difference with earlier incarnation, maybe not (below).

It’s nice to have company.

In the meantime, I finally talked to my paid manuscript consultant yesterday. Round three coming up. I know I’ve said this before but it bears repeating, perhaps even shouting off the rooftops: SHE LOVES MY BOOK.

I think people forget how solitary a process writing is.

House names should not be italicized. If I’m gonna talk about the elder Middletons toward the end, they need to be introduced earlier. Still sags here and there — needs tightening. Not so many descriptions of clouds, perhaps. Maybe not so much about Melody’s first owner. Explain what head rights are and how to memorialize land in Author’s Note, which starts like this:

When I began this novel, Trayvon Martin was alive and as I finished the second edit, George Floyd was dead.

The suggestion that I add an epilogue (say in 1758 after Eliza and Charles Pinckney return from a five year stay in England), will take a little more thought. That’s fourteen years after my original end. Lots of years I haven’t thought about all that much.

A six year time frame (1738 to 1744) allowed a laser-like focus. Etiquette in 1720? I don’t care! Rice markets in 1750? Also don’t care. Now I need to care. I’ll start with Eliza’s letters.

A walk with temps in the 40’s was cause for celebration this week. Daffodils shoving aside leaf debris. Snow shrugging off the curbs. It won’t be long now ’til the miracle of hyacinths.

In the meantime I am trying to answer the question (Acey’s): how do you hold your heart? Or maybe just asking it. Softly.

The collage challenge with Paris Collage Collective continues. This week: Shirley Chisholm.

More to come. I want to cut up seed catalogues and wreathe her head with flowers. In the collage above, the headstone of Harriett Jacobs served as reference to the long history of oppression, Jacobs being another Black woman who overcame so much.