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| Patch #1 - #3 |
I don't think I expected them to be quite so wordy, but that's what fell out of my fingers (to paraphrase Mo, who had some incredible stuff fall from her hands here).
"It's only rain" played in my head all day yesterday after I drove to the food store and noticed the dark rims of the raindrops on the windshield. I tried replicating the effect using a Pitt pen ...
followed by backstitch and Inktense pencils ...
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| Patch #2 close up |
It was another first-time experiment and I'm realizing this cloth will probably end up being a sampler, whatever else it may become.
This morning I awoke to find the clouds parting in the west, with a promise of sun to come. Walking out to get the papers, I found 0.6" in the rain gauge and splashes of new growth in the lawn. So I got bold (for me) and picked an uncharacteristically bright thrifted linen blouse from my stash. Tearing off a strip, I was delighted to find it to be two colors woven together, seen here on the back of the patch ...
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| Patch #3 B-side |
The quote stitched on to the front is from the autobiographical song Mother Blues by local songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard that seemed to fit how I'm feeling more and more often ...
And the days that I keep my gratitudehigher than my expectations ...
well, I have really good days"
That walk down the driveway also triggered a decision to try stitching one inch patches representing each month's rainy (blue) and sunny (yellow) days ...
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| The first five gray squares are "blanks" added to facilitate the calendar format |
We'll see how that goes.
Meanwhile, here's one of Don's Christmas projects ...
Trios of snow-y houses with warm yellow light glowing in their (wood burned) windows ... one set for each of the girls and a third set promised for our collection.
The houses were cut from an 8 foot long 4x4 beam Don spotted in a tree down the road. No doubt it was washed in during the Halloween flood and wouldn't be missed by the owner of the vacant lot on which it landed. So Don salvaged it and cut random rooflines with his new (this year) table saw ...
And that was just one of his projects, so stay tuned.
ahhhhh, a table saw. O, eeeeeeeeeeee, don't i wish.
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty cool, I must say.
DeleteKeeping a record of the days as they slip by....lovely. And Don's houses are the perfect symbol of Christmas...amongst the stars of the universe we are safely at home.
ReplyDeleteThank you Dana ... you summed it up perfectly. And I'm now realizing that these little patches may have the unintended benefit of spurring more frequent posting (hmmm ... hope that's a good thing)
DeleteI love that Don made a set of his snow village for each of your daughters as well as for yourselves. While they may be for the holidays, I would keep them out all year because home is where the heart is and the love that Don has for creating is such a family treasure.
ReplyDeleteLiz, what I love about your patchwork, something that I do not do, is the fact that while I tend to think of patchwork as highly detailed and somewhat controlled, maybe because of the same size of each piece, I don't find that with yours. Your choice of themes for your patches keeps them so organic and because of that, those little squares come alive with story.
Thank you x2 Marti! It's been amazing to see what Don has created with the miter saw. I'm now trying to talk him into another saw that will enable him to cut lengths of wood. Who knows where that might end up!
DeleteAs for patchwork, I resisted it for a long, long time. But since I've figured out that linen is exceedingly forgiving (just give a little tug on one patch or another and things line up ... sorta ... good enough for me) and that the variable size let's me freestyle, now I'm trying to embrace color, which is a huge leap (oh ha! Leap year ... bad, and totally unintended play on words).
lets, not let's ... autocorrect can be sooo annoying sometimes
Deletegiven the extreme problems that came with rain in your neck of the woods last year, I think a LITTLE trepidation is allowed? having said that, I Love Rainy Days and don't understand all the weather people who characterize them as somehow 'less than' sunny days.
ReplyDeletethis sampler is gonna be fun, great, interesting -- I can tell!
(and could Don make me a few houses?!@! just kidding, but they are darling)
Said the woman who makes incredible cloth houses (I smile)
DeleteRain is deeply respected ... we sit on the 98th meridian, which Susan Wittig Albert writes "[is] the 'institutional fault line' that Walter Prescott Webb describes as the great divide between the wooded east and the arid west." We count every inch that falls, dreading the flash floods and hard droughts by turns. We love it here.