Tag Archives: sewing

pins in my mouth and on my lap

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Pinned this little piece up yesterday.

Took it to the Reggie Lewis Athletic Center and quilted a little during the four hour wait for C’s 4×400 relay.

It may be an exercise in frustration.  No glue, no tulle, no basting —  just me and my lazy girl pin job.

My strategy is to work the places that can easily be worked first, always making sure that where pieces meet, the fabric will lie down properly.  Pretty much means working edges inward.  It helps to have two needles going, sometimes.

I am doing a combination of folded-under applique and raw-edged.  Probably, with the possible exception of that red velvet, this quilt will be entirely hand-quilted.

You may remember this bleached red plaid from the Happy Hut Quilt that I made for D. (that red plaid flannel was used, one December not long ago, to make his pj bottoms – a traditional Christmas Eve gift in this house (though I will admit to buying the pants in the last couple of years)).

I finished that quilt, by the way (above).  The Ghost House version is in a lull.  Down in the cold, cold basement on a pinboard.  It will wait.

 

felt house – toot/toot

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Yesterday, I spent the better part of the morning having a love affair with my new tripod (now, now, don’t even picture those dirty things!).  Truly, I am having so much fun.  To prepare for tomorrow’s class, I made a new felt hut and documented as I went.  A total first stab at a still-life tutorial — here.  It runs just shy of a minute, so I hope you can take a peek.  Criticism welcome.

Meanwhile, the moon has been peeking in my window.  This is roughly the view from my bed.  Aspidistra and beech limbs talking in lines while the moon makes an illuminated beauty spot, a little like Peppy Miller, and her “little something extra”, in the movie ‘The Artist’.

Digging up and documenting and noodling.  Part of my gift to C. for his quickly approaching 18th birthday, is a collection of journal entries about him (I am already way behind schedule!)  The picture below goes back much further, however, to a batch of illustrations created for book of poems written as a freshman in college (1975).  I’ll spare you the poetry.

Meanwhile, my plaster friends probably have at least another season in them.  They certainly will keep themselves entertained.  I suspect they are talking about me, here.

Although perhaps they, too, are taken with the moon, rouging them up to a feminine pink here.

teeny-scenery

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This fragment surfaced during the flood clean up. I had set it aside to reincorporate into a larger piece, but when I saw it again, it looked complete. Added the background grid, some of the up and down stitching over the black and zig-zagged the edges. The wonderful house in black outline and tree came from a pair of Capris.

spring light

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The spring light flooded our family room late this afternoon.  I don’t remember it ever being lit up like this before.  By the time I got my camera out, it was the shadows that interested me, so I haven’t captured the golden warm moment at all, really.  I share the photo of our kitchen TV and dinner clutter only because it DOES capture the light a bit better.

When I look at this picture and I don’t think, “Gee, cool, there I am in the reflection.”  No, I think, “Why was that light on?!”

Soon, our neighbor’s 200 year old copper beech will leaf out, and the light will be dappled and less intense (and that’s nice too).

With the poppy pillow commission finished, I can finally get back to my big-big quilt.

Recycled shirts and tiny pieces of Most Favored Fabrics (like a trading status!) are turning into huts and villages, here and there.


I took so much time to piece these big sections, that it would be a shame if I hid all the evidence of that work (i.e., the SEAMS), but that is the temptation right now…

That blue spade fabric (a roof of rain?) is cotton that K. brought back from India last month.  It was hard to cut, because it was such soft cotton, but cut I did. It is one of many fabrics that translates into “RAIN” in this piece.

Looking for Redemption and Crying Wolf

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The sagas go on and on, don’t they?  Started this crucifix series before “the flood” and why shouldn’t my particular saga have its biblical moments? Because what day doesn’t go by, really, when I’m not looking for redemption in some form or other? 

I am looking for redemption even on those days when it seems as though I am just trying to get through. I am looking for redemption even on my good days — and by that I certainly don’t mean times when I feel like the master of my fate — but rather I mean days when I have enough wherewithal to entertain the POSSIBILITY of accepting life exactly as it is. But here’s the thing, can one be —

”seeing things and accepting things exactly as they are”

and still find redemption? Isn’t wishing for a world in which every mess is an opportunity and every delay, packed with meaning, by DEFINITION, a state of non-acceptance (because, let’s face it, there ARE situations in which there is no silver lining to be found).


Well, anyway, there D. and I were yesterday, waiting and waiting for ‘the shoulder guy’.  It had begun to rain again, a status of weather that THIS week provokes a palpable dread. The patients were flying in and out all around us, but D.’s name had not been called at the 50 minute mark (I complained), or at the 65 minute mark (I complained again). Then after 75 minutes and after leaving, and after listening to D. ask, “Why am I here? This is useless” a few too many times, the assistant called us in. 

The assistant called us in just moments after I had written in two-inch letters on the intake form, “WAITED 75 MINUTES”, which of course made me wonder — had I written “WAITED 35 MINUTES” on the form 40 minutes earlier, would we have been ushered us in sooner? (You begin to see just HOW superstitious I am).

Anyway, I stitched on this piece for awhile, not for one moment asking myself to call in the Christ-energy of patience and not once noticing the disparity between image and mood. That’s how irate I was.

After 10 minutes with the doctor (who apologized so excessively I began to feel a little abashed), we scuttled off to X-ray.  And back.

And, OMG, the news was a little shattering (forgive the pun). What first seemed (to me) back in the dead of winter as one in a long series of whinge-fests, and then seemed (to the chiropractor) like a separated shoulder, turned out to have been a fractured collarbone. (Healed, already, I’m happy to report).

So, I apologized to D. (although not excessively). Then, after quietly pointing out that the amount and volume of complaints make it hard for me to pick out any particular one as needing extra intervention, D. and I devised a code for ‘this really, really hurts and I need you to do something about it’.  Our code is, “Mom, this is an 8.”

This was GOING to be a post about the basement and the progress down there and how the flood disaster HAS turned into this amazing re-shuffling, re-ordering, and investment in storage units that has me psyched and energized (in other words, an OPPORTUNITY). 

I was going to add something about the dynamics of dependence and understanding one’s personal style of attacking a monumental task (because dear reader, what most of you didn’t know is that my husband was in India for ALL of this, which provided additional OPPORTUNITIES for learning). Perhaps tomorrow I shall return to that, after another two inches of rainfall, unless, of course, I have my cherry-printed wellies on again and am threading the hose out the back door and trying not to cry.