- Trees on the Homestead: Improv applique

Here's a quick update on my last "What if," which seems to be working. After using Jude Hill's invisible basting technique from Spirit Cloth 101 to attach the back of a repurposed linen blouse to the Homestead towel, I started cutting away the areas in the design that are not tree-covered:

Where there are trees on the property, I'm turning under the green linen and tacking down the edges using Jude's appliqué technique.

It's slow going, but it's giving me the look I wanted. Hopefully my efficiency will pick up with practice, but that remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, I'm pondering a post on Spirit Cloth that takes exception to the concept of "stealing" from other artists. It's a legitimate gripe since the internet makes it incredibly easy to rip off someone else's work and misrepresent it as one's own ... and Jude Hill has been so victimized.

As a (retired) librarian, I have to agree with Jude's concern up to a point, since citing sources is part and parcel of quality research. But if you attribute or give credit to the inspiration for your work (as I did above), that's not "stealing," right?

"Steal" is a provocative word. And I can't speak for Austin Kleon, who uses the word in the title of his book Steal Like an Artist, but I actually like his use of "steal" because it makes me think he's trying to provoke his readers: "to stir up [them up] purposely" (to quote Merriam-Webster Online, www.m-w.com). Stealing sounds anti-social and not at all what we expect of artists ... which is why the title gets your attention and makes you think. 

In fact, Austin Kleon gives credit to his sources (even after he comes up with an idea on his own and only realizes later that it's already been done); he does not countenance theft. If anything, he's raising awareness about the difference between stealing from and being influenced by another person's work. So I would characterize him as a provocateur in the best sense of the word.

And that's not a bad thing at all.

-------------------------------------------------

An Artist's Story (4)

There's a watercolor in the guest room made by my grandfather (aka Pop Pops).

I know he painted it around the time he retired from the plumbing business, because he thoughtfully signed it:

He also informed his viewers that the subject of the painting was Old Ironsides, aka the  ...

And I just discovered Pop Pops copied it from another artist's painting. I know that because he wrote this along the bottom:

Which I think is pretty cool. I'd be hard-pressed to make a copy of this quality and I'm willing to bet that my grandfather got a fair bit of practice in mark making along the way to finishing this:

But he wasn't satisfied with copying. In the mid-1960s he took a correspondence course in watercolor painting from the Famous Artists School (which still exists).

His technique improved and he learned tricks of the trade, such as masking medium, which he used here to create an impression of grass blades and to sign his work.

Greatly influenced by Andrew Wyeth, my grandfather painted landscapes of the Catskills (using old photographs) and  Shelter Island shore birds (with details researched in field guides). Two of the bird paintings spent a lot of time on the walls of our homes and eventually landed in Meg and Paul's house, where we enjoy visiting them from time to time.

As wonderful as they always appeared to my (then young) eyes, I do remember my dad muttering darkly about "Jack's perspective" (or lack thereof). But that's another story.

- On pins and needles: Trying dyeing

I've had a project working in the background ... unsure how it would out, but now seeing that it will be usable.

Having a large quantity of loosely woven muslin, it occurred to me that there was enough to make a light summer robe. After a few judicious folds, it appeared the robe would require only two short shoulder seams.

And since it was painfully plain, I decided to try dyeing it with windfall lichens 

and onion skins ... all wrapped together and steeped in hot water from the tap.

As with most novice dyers, I peeked too soon, so the previous photo is actually a re-wrap (which is why the ties are already colored). But I was happy enough with the final dye to continue constructing the robe, boro-style.

It's nearing completion, at which time the plan is to layer on more color ... adding some avocado skins to the mix and trimming the vegetal matter to make more coherent design elements.

And so, once again, "to be continued" ...

------------------------------------------------

On a pincushion (3)

(link here to the 1877 story of the same title)

This latest story takes place outdoors, since the things we love can be found in the garden as well as the house.

New to Texas, we are still learning the flora and fauna as well as how best to manage the land. Our latest project has been cactus-whacking to eliminate some of the prickly pear, which will help out the grasses and make the trails a little safer for two-legged critters.

This week, the cactus whacked back, as I took a dive while dumping a load on the compost heaps. Fortunately, I was wearing good gloves, so I only had to pull pins and needles out of my forearm.

A different kinda pincushion

 There are, however, cactus so beguiling that they are given a home in the rock garden. Don successfully transplanted lace cactus last year, and last week we discovered this shy little specimen on the flood plain.

Since there were two others nearby (we try not to transplant anything that's one of a kind), Don made some room in the lace cactus bed and moved in our latest volunteer.

Note: the cacti are about 3 inches high

And they all lived happily ever after.

- Back to the Homestead: What if ... ?

I finished my stitch sampler and it is now serving its intended purpose as a kitchen towel. The three layers of cloth make it a bit bulky when folded, so I'll probably change the format to "single-wide" the next time around. I'm also becoming a two-threads of floss convert, finding it works up less tediously and shows up so much better.

Now I'm back to the Homestead towel, which needs to have trees added to it. So I'm wondering: 

What if I baste a piece of green fabric (from a finely-woven linen shirt that never did fit quite right) onto the top of the cloth and then cut away everything but the treeline and appliqué the edges?

To be continued ...

-----------------------------

And now a bedtime story (2)

The bed in our guest room came from my father's parents: Gertrude Elizabeth Snow and Arthur Snyder Barnett. My dad was their second son (third child) born fifteen years after his brother Ken (who never got over his younger brother being named Arthur Junior).

It made its way to my childhood bedroom at 141 Wellington Road in Mineola, where a monster took up residence underneath it each night. When we moved to East Williston the bed was relegated to basement storage where it gathered dust for a decade until Don and I rescued it along with an eclectic mix of attic-down cast-offs, taking them all in a U-Haul truck to our first home Virginia.

It moved from the master bedroom to the guest room at 127 Wilson Circle, from the garage at 260 Nina Lane to Meghan's room at 303 Hempstead Road. It survived a cross-country trek from Williamsburg to Wimberley, arriving at last in the guest room at Cascade Trail.  When we don't have any company I use it to store my growing collection of repurposed cloth for future quilting projects.

Mom's quilt fits the bed perfectly and her father's painting hangs over them both. But that's another story. 

- What if ... NOT: Inkjet printing on premounted cloth

One of the (many) things I like about Jude Hill is her "What if ...?" approach to creativity. So I had a thought:

What if I created a kitchen towel cloth that combined a polygonal map of our property with the topo contours of the neighborhood swirling around it?

It was a pretty good idea, but it went wrong when I took it one step further to:

What if I print our property map on the cotton cloth I bought and appliqué that onto a tea-dyed linen napkin?

Then stitch over the lines of elevation?

Except ... the cotton was so white (maybe some tea dye?) ... and so stiff (maybe my thumb will callous?) ... and there were so many extraneous marks (maybe they'll wash out?). There were just too many maybes.

In fact, the only thing I really liked was the back:

So it has been undone.

Lesson learned: this thing was stitched to stay on forever. Now it's back to the drawing board.

PostScript:

What if I use some packing tape to clean up all those loose threads?

Nice!

------------------------------------------------

And now a story (1) ... the first of many I hope. Because it occurred to me that the things that give us the most pleasure are meaningful because of the stories behind them. 

So I'm going to try to end each post with a story about something I love, beginning with my mother's quilt. 

The story begins at the Williamsburg Soap and Candle Factory quilt shop, where Mom picked out fabrics during a Christmas visit before our girls were even born. She worked on the quilt blocks in-between many smaller quilting projects over the course of two decades.

It actually has a part of its story inscribed on the back by the woman who ultimately quilted it:

The sad part of the story is that my mom never saw the quilt completed. Instead, the blocks that she pieced sat in a box until after her death. And after it was quilted and returned to Shelter Island, it ended up in a linen closet.

Happily, it now rests on the bed in which I slept as a child. But that's another story.

- The long and winding road: A kitchen towel stitch sampler

Never let it be said that I read and follow recipes (already well-documented in previous posts). Rather, I prefer to find my own way ... which can lead to some interesting journeys. So it is with Jude Hill's Spirit Cloth 101.

The stitch sampler that I wrote about in the last post took some unexpected turns, taking a cue from Owen Temple's recent song Make Something, in which he urges "show it to your people, don't forget to sign your name."

Fortunately, the water-erasable marker worked as intended:

I took one last look at the back (which probably would have worked as it was),

but in the spirit of Spirit Cloth, I basted a layer of loose-woven muslin to the back ...

Knowing that those long basting stitches on the back would cause some problems for a kitchen towel, I then basted a second layer of muslin (you really have to take the Spirit Cloth 101 class to find out more about how and why) and began quilting. In this photo you can see both the front (to the left) and the back (overturned corner):

As with the stitching, I am quilting some of the sampler with a single thread of floss, and then will add a second thread of floss to the rest of the sampler to see which I prefer.

It's also a great way to practice and get used to the feel of a totally new (to me) form of needlework. Ironically, I'll probably "follow the recipe" in the future by basting the first layer of backing onto the linen before stitching the front. Live and learn.

- Follow the yellow brick road: Trying out Spirit Cloth 101 stitches

After posting yesterday, my fingers started to itch. So I grabbed a cotton linen napkin and, following Jude Hill's suggestion to "scribble stitch" as a fill, made a series of random doodles with a water-erase marker (I'm not quite ready to use the permanent markers she recommends).

Then I chose a gold/green/rust variegated floss that has previously proved to be a little too variable for cross stitch samplers and decided to try out some of the stitches from Spirit Cloth 101. As each strand ran out, I ended with a thread bead (Jude's alternative to French knots).

I also let go of my judgmental attitude about my handwriting (thank you Jude) and started labeling each stitch without resorting to the rubber stamp letters I've been using lately. Much quicker ... and truer to myself.

For now, I'm working everything in a single strand of floss and taking relatively small stitches. 

It will be interesting to try these same stitches with two strands later in the piece. I've already had to let go of a beaded back stitch that simply didn't work on the single-strand scale, but I can see how using two strands will make a positive difference. Indeed, this is a becoming a sampler in the truest sense of the word.

The back reveals even more about the process:

However, since I do intend this to be a functional kitchen towel, I've been considering how to guard the back from the wear and tear that will inevitably be visited on it. Taking a cue from Jude's spirit cloth quilting and combining that knowledge with the softly-layered towels that Meg recently purchased, I'm thinking that backing the finished towel with a layer of loose-woven muslin may be a good solution.

We'll see ...

- ... Down the rabbit hole: Discovering new ways of needleworking

I know, I know ... I disappeared, but I have a really good excuse. After exploring Jude Hill's Spirit Cloth blog, I decided to register for her online workshop of the same name. It's the best $65 I've spent in a long time and is opening up new thoughts about where I want to go with quotidian cloth making.

Better yet, Jude Hill is a native Long Islander, so her voice has a cadence and timbre that takes me back to my earliest needleworking days, in a very positive sense.

Anyway, no new work to show for now. I am composting ideas and hope to turn them into something magical.

Someday.  Soon?