- Progress on The Homestead: Stitching stones and letters

My slow stitching is best summed up as a two-steps-forward, one-step-back process. And so, after spending last Friday stitching the rock walls in a zig-zag chain of variegated thread (two steps forward):

I decided the color transitions were too abrupt and spent Saturday tearing all the rock walls out (one step back).

The next step forward was changing to one strand of the variegated thread and one strand of solid gray, zigging and zagging irregularly for a more nuanced effect, much like the limestone walls themselves:

Adding the lettering was another do/undo/redo process. Fortunately, I revised the plan from an earlier post (much as I repeatedly revise recipes), choosing to stamp the lettering using a V-Clear water-erasable pen instead of the "permanent" ink markers. If a letter was misplaced, it was easily removed with a bit of damp toweling, then re-inked. I didn't go for perfect placement, however. I was especially pleased that the Stepping Stones variegated floss by Crescent Colours (one of three brands I purchased in Williamsburg) was far more subtle than the thread in the rock walls since the lettering could only be done with a single strand.

Here's the top half so far ...

and the bottom half ...

With the rock walls and most of the lettering done, I'm now starting to experiment with how to stitch the trees and grasses ... no doubt this too will change:

- The Homestead in Stitches: A needlework map emerges

I wrote about a new project earlier this month: a kitchen towel needleworked with a "map" of our property. However, the thing about slow cloth (wait for it) is that it's sorta slow. Especially when one is otherwise occupied with travel and grandchildren (both of which are not to be rushed).

Still, the newest quotidian effort has reached a point worth documenting:

This is a bird's eye view of our house and garage, trails and driveway. Note the variegated floss, which was purchased on our way out of Williamsburg last week. Dare I say good things happen when we leave the Burg? Well then, we'll have to go back more frequently, methinks.

So, to make this more truly quotidian, I'd like the stitching to be as much a part of my daily life as the end product will be. Next up (in no particular order): rock walls, trail names, grasses, and trees.

To be continued (slowly) ...

- There's something fishy going on here: Folk art fish-to-be

Blog blog blog ...

That was the text message we got from Meg last night. So without further ado, here are three metal implements (with on-hand embellishments) that Don found at Seagreen Gallery during our trip to the East Coast last week:

Of course, after I took the picture he told me I was looking at them upside down. So much for a shared vision.

Stay tuned to see how they end up ...

- Thar she blows! The newest folk art whale

The great white whale has taken its place on the breezeway wall, along with the fish detailed in a previous post.

As with the other folk art pieces Don has made, the whale has imaginative details:

Detail: Metal washers for the eye,
driftwood glazed with milk paint for the pectoral fin

Detail: Fluke cut from a rusted
pressed metal sheet found at By the Bridge Antiques, Wimberley

But what I like best about this latest addition to the breezeway is the way he "saw" the whale in the peeling white paint and the shape of the board.

Ahab would be impressed.

- Repurposed placemats

Originally posted 6/9/2013 in On The Trail

Problem: our 1990s placemats were a little too big for the table, and the scalloped edges really dated them style-wise. But they always washed up well and they were a gift from my Mom. What to do?

I poked around in my closet until I found a light weight skirt that I never wore since it didn't really fit right. After trimming the scalloped edges off of the placemats, I proceeded to cut the skirt fabric into strips ...

... then machine sewed the strips onto the placemats and "quilted" them down with wavy lines.

Problem solved!

- Gone fishing: Mixed media assemblages

We spend a fair bit of time on the back breezeway: taking water breaks between cactus-whacking stints, sipping decaf after dinner as the sun sets, or just sitting in the sun watching the birds fly by.

Anyway, two years ago when Don started creating whales for Jackson's nursery and fish for Griffin's crib mobile, he made a small shark (totally cool and absolutely inappropriate for child's play):

Part of an old screen door wood forms the body of the shark

Driftwood and rusted wire tail

Button eye, shell teeth, and rusted metal fins ...
notice how the wood color naturally flows from the eye

Seeing an opportunity, I requested more fish for the breezeway walls, but a whole lotta not much happened. Then I found the perfect inspiration piece when Meliss took me birthday shopping at the Seagreen Gallery last year:

It was just what Don needed to prime the  pump and soon there was a companion fish on the wall:

After carving scales into the wood, Don painted the fish with layers of milk paint. The tail spots were
applied with daubers and the mouth was masked off with painters tape before daubing, making for a very sharp line.

A bent metal washer and rusted nut eye with
a pretty cool paint job using products from realmilkpaint.com

But the three small fish looked lonely on the breezeway wall. Off we went to Junkology, where Don found some potential fish eyes and a couple of old pitchforks. 

 "Great tails!"

And then, after Don explained what he was up to, the owner threw in some interesting old boards, one of which inspired the following:

Pitchfork tail, hex wrench dorsal fin, repurposed metal eye

The formerly black hex wrenches in the dorsal fin were rusted on a vinegar and salt soaked sponge,
but the pitchfork tines were already rusted to a perfect turn.

Hex wrench mouth with rusted nails, a who-knows-what eye,
rusted screen door handle gills, and a light wash of blue milk paint

Now, with the white whale in progress, the breezeway may soon look more like Sea World in San Antonio than the Hill Country in San Marcos ... which, come to think of it, is exactly what I hoped would happen.

- Try ... try again and again: Needlework lettering (updated 2/8/2015)

Note: To see all posts with letters of some kind, use the new Index term: Lettering.

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In getting ready to start the next linen towel, I wanted to see whether I could make use of some rubber stamps for lettering.

I tried the black fabric ink pad on "Blue Stem" and the brown fabric marker on "Grass" ... then using a single strand of DMC black floss, I backstitched "Blue" and "Gras," leaving "Stem" and the last "s" in "Grass" unstitched.

Note how the ink pad left shadows around the letters in "Blue Stem" ... and how the letters in all the words are far from level. Still, the whole point of the exercise was to see what did and did not work. So the final step was to wash and press the piece to see which inking method worked best.

And it's pretty much a tie. I was pleased that the ink washed out on both (although they're not supposed to wash out, I was hoping they would). However, it was much easier to see my stitching in progress doing black on brown, so that's what I'll be using.

Onward.

Addendum: I have since found that using a water-erasable fabric marking pen on the rubber stamps is an even better strategy. Live and learn.

Addendum 2: Best yet ... writing in my own hand using water erasable marking pen

Addendum 3: And even better ... writing in my own hand using a Pitt pen.

- Have you seen the white whale? Folk art assemblage in progress

Me: "Wait, wait ... slow down! I want to take pictures."

Don: "I can put it back together."

Of course, I ended up taking the pictures in terrible light with the iPhone (never mind that there's a perfectly good dslr in the house). But when Don starts doing a fish (or in this case, a whale), things happen fast.

Carpe diem (aka seize the sperm whale).

Be watching for the big reveal on the breezeway wall in a hopefully-not-too-distant-future post.

- Kitchen Towel planning: The Homestead

Do you remember having to show your work in school? And how frustrating it could be to show each and every step when the answer was abundantly clear? Besides, how do you show a mental leap on paper? Or, in the case of a blog, how do you know when to take a picture?

Still, Austin Kleon has a point: sometimes it can be a good thing to show the process by which you arrived at a final product or conclusion. It's especially interesting when the dead-end ideas are thrown aside ... who knows what fertile ground they may land on and what may spring from them in the future?

As I finished hemstitching a new kitchen towel, I started thinking out loud, wondering what to stitch. The lines of running stitch on the napkin and kitchen towel in the previous post had reminded me of the lines of latitude and longitude on topographic maps. Pulling out a map of the USGS Wimberley Quadrangle from my Texas State University days, I discovered that the towel was almost, not quite as large. Certainly do-able.

At which point Don said, "Didn't you say something once about doing a map of the property?"

"I dunno," I mused, "the proportions aren't right. Our lot is 200' by 800' and the towel is about one-and-a-half by two feet. Of course, I could cut off the flood plain at the back ... just stop at the fire pit."

Then I went down the rabbit hole.

Three hours, several maps from Google and a plat from our house closing folder later, I had sketched in a towel-sized version of the front two-thirds of the property on a piece of baking parchment paper. After coming up for air, I spent the rest of the afternoon working in the yard, and with only a glance or two at the sketch over the course of the evening, went to bed and slept on it (figuratively speaking).

[Note: this would be a really great place for a picture, wouldn't it?]

The next morning I dug out some watercolor pencils purchased several years ago. They were a fanciful indulgence considering I discovered many, many years ago (when I mistakenly talked my way into a third-year art major's drawing class) that I don't draw very well. But rough sketching is something I can do and hey, you just never know when you might need some watercolor pencils, right? The time had arrived and as I've been wont to say, it's all about the pantry: whether you are cooking or creating, you just have to have the right ingredients on hand when you need them.

So I started coloring in my sketch, finessing some of the lines from the previous day, peering out the windows every so often to get a reality check on where the little blue stem grasses had taken hold, stepping back to take in the bigger picture, imagining what stitches would work best for roof lines and paths, trees and grasses. I vaguely recall Don saying he was going to the store, and at one point I thought it might be past the normal time to brush my teeth, although upon so doing I managed to deposit a fair bit of pencil dust from my hands to the towel in the bathroom.

Finally, I realized the sketch was good enough for its intended purpose and I stopped, took a quick picture, then cleared the counter so Don could unload the groceries.

The morning gone, it was time for lunch: an Asian-inspired salad of greens, red pepper, red cabbage, scallions, mint, Thai basil, cilantro, grilled pork, and wontons dressed with pickled ginger juice, lime juice, rice wine vinegar, peanut oil, sesame oil, and white soy sauce.

Yep, it's all about the pantry.
Now if I can just figure out where
that fabric marking pencil got to ...