- Bare earth clothed

We've been helping my daughter and son-in-law prep their South Austin condo in anticipation of putting it on the market this spring.

The retaining wall above their driveway didn't always look like this ...

The patch of ground below the wall would get scoured whenever it rained hard. So we put in some water breaks (brakes?) and added 1/2 cubic yard of Thunder Dirt (a mix of local soil, compost and decomposed granite) ...

Creating a rim of rock around each sprinkler head ...

As well as another water break further downslope ...

All capped off with a thick layer of hardwood mulch and some repurposed agaves ... 

Still to be added: feather grasses and Spanish daggers transplanted from our Hill Country digs once the weather moderates a little more.

Now we just have to wait and see how it all holds up to the next gulley-washer.

- Re-vision: New pictures for Close Your Eyes

When I did the first edition of the lullaby book, I printed photos of my daughters with Jace and Griffin on a commercial cotton cloth on an adhesive backing designed to go through the inkjet printer. The quality wasn't great, but the pictures were adequately recognizable.

Of course, after finishing Jace's book, I found an inkjet canvas that worked much better, so that was what I used for Griffin's book ...

It made the photo in Jace's book pale by comparison (literally), so I cut Jace's picture out, printed a new picture and slid it into the resulting hole ...

The resulting edge is a little wonky, but the picture quality is much better ...

And as Don pointed out, the whole book is wonky, so it all works.

- Metaphor?

The ground of our Hill Country home is littered with rock ...

The grasses grow up around it, but the trees seemingly grow right through it ...

Pushing stone out of the way, reaching up to the light. And where they meet, the stone pushes back ...

But the tree persists ...

Heals its wounds and keeps going ...

- Variations on a theme: Close Your Eyes, the second edition

The text of Griffin's lullaby book will be the same as Jace's, but the images will be revised ... re-visioned ... taking lessons learned the first time around and turning them into another way of getting to the same place.

For instance, after a chorus of comments about the b-sides shown here, I decided the new edition will be made with the intention of showing both sides ...

Unlike the first spinning old world that was silk appliqued onto denim,
in this version I basted the silk onto muslin, cut a mask in the denim, then appliqued the denim onto the silk/muslin

Which means I'm burying all the knots where they can't be seen ...

I tend to work a little tight (it's a personal issue), but I'm okay with the puffiness of the center ...
it gives the inner circle an interesting sense of movement on both the back and the front,
which is why I liberated the silk from the invisible baste stitches that held it down during the applique process.

But as I added thread bead stars to the spinning old world, I realized I could have made the invisible baste more visible in the first place and saved myself going back a second time. 

So I intentionally made the white invisible basting stitches more visible around the rising moon ...

Since the invisible baste is worked with a single strand, the stars appear as pinpoints

It's subtle, but I like how the back looks and feels ...

BTW, this page is not yet complete ... there are tree branches yet to be added  as they were here

- Close Your Eyes: The final chapter of the first edition

It's a book ... which is not just the title of my favorite toddler board book, but also the result of my most recent endeavor in stitch ...

Of course, a printed book would have a dedication page, but due to space limitations, this blog post will have to suffice:

Dedicated to Jude Hill
with much appreciation
for her artistry and inspiration

Because as I stitched the final page, I realized that Close Your Eyes had become a virtual sampler of the many innovative stitches and techniques gleaned from Jude's incredible online classes on Spirit Cloth.

First, here are the overview shots: the a-sides, if you will, to the b-sides shown in the last post ...
 

Then the close-up shots, with notes in the captions that detail the techniques, stitches, and back stories ...

Cloth weaving anchored with invisible baste, Kantha stitch (aka running stitch), split back stitch

Wrap stitch (aka satin stitch) and Kantha stitch (aka running stitch)
I never would have thought to use a tattered edge like this before Spirit Cloth 101

Closer view of split back stitch on a setting sun discharge dyed with bleach

Full moon discharge dyed with bleach on denim
Back stitch worked from the reverse side, see details in this post

A bit of silk tie from Don's school administrator days
spinning through a galaxy of thread bead stars

The back side of some rust dyeing and a picture of Melissa and Jace
inkjet printed on cotton fabric and attached with invisible baste and blanket stitch

Text hand lettered with a Pitt pen and back stitched with a single strand of floss

Each page was connected to
the spine with ladder stitching

Interior view of ladder stitch in the spine (top pulled tight, bottom left loose to show detail)

Cloth label hand lettered in Pitt pen and back stitched

Interior label lettered in Pitt pen on cotton cloth from a threadbare shirt of my mom's
that I wore as a nightshirt virtually every day of the six years following her death in 2008.
First repurposed here when I began following Spirit Cloth, a part of it will now be passed on to her great-grandson.

- February 14: B-sides being Valentine's Day

I can tell you exactly what I had to eat for lunch on Valentine's Day twenty-nine years ago: a Belgian waffle with vanilla Haagen Dazs ice cream and hot fudge sauce. Then I took a long nap and when I woke up, it was snowing. By 8:00 Don insisted we go to the hospital before the snow got any deeper ... a few hours later Melissa Reid entered the world.

Which is why this is what we had for dessert tonight ...

Yes, I did add tart cherries in a soft creamy mousse this time around ... seemed like the color was just right for Melissa's birthday (around here we call February 14th "Valentine's Day" at our peril).

And it was also noteworthy that Jace's lullaby book took a leap forward, with all twelve pages now complete and stitched together along their individual spines ...

The next step will be to secure the other three edges of each pair, but before concealing the b-sides I took one last look at each two-page spread from the inside ...

With any luck, I'll be done by the end of the week ... just in time to head to St. Louis.

- The main reason I'm proud to be a William and Mary alum ...

My brother Art, a retired FDNY lieutenant, posted this video on Facebook calling it Jon Stewart's finest moment. I quite agree.

And while the Daily Show will reportedly go on after Jon Stewart leaves later this year, he will be one tough act to follow.

- A stitch in time: Tailoring 101

Judy Martin posted a series of photographs of a Normal School Sewing Book that triggered a memory of this long-forgotten notebook ...

Fourteen years after I left my position as Needleworker at Colonial Williamsburg to become a librarian, I took a one-day class in tailoring techniques led by former Historic Trades cohort Rick Hill. Intended to showcase the skills needed by the staff of the Costume Design Center, it was a brief return to stitch at a time when I was fully involved with the planning and building of the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library.

Here's my professional librarian self looking very busy in the old library just before we moved ...

And here's the building that we moved to ...

One year after the tailoring class, I left my corner office (the lovely ten foot window at the lower left) to become a school librarian. But that's another story.

Looking at the notebook now, I realize how much I had neglected my stitching at the time ...

By the way, it's important to note these were all tailoring techniques ... 

Underhand hemstitch

which can be somewhat different from needlework or embroidery, as in this cross stitch example ...

Although apparently a backstich is a backstitch, is a backstitch ...

These are the pages in their entirety, as captured on the scanner. Note that the white fabric is a loose woven linen and the blue fabric is a heavy felted wool ...

Including several pages that we obviously didn't get to in the one short day of the class ...

The last of which is most intriguing: a combination running and back stitch ...

I wonder how I might make use of that ...