Echoes of peace giveaway

Note: The Peace Pin Project of 2017 reached more than 70 individuals in 19 states in the US, plus six other countries. What follows is the original post that launched the project.
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Barry Smith wrote a blog post on Rustnstuff calling for readers to leave words about hope and peace.

My response was: "The world's best hope for peace is that we find a way to love each other without pre-conditions. Time will tell (10)"

To the first ten commenters, Barry promised a pendant. Mine arrived yesterday. The note jolted me:
IT'S TIME ... MAY HOPE AND PEACE PREVAIL.

Call ...

and response ...

The peace pin I will send to Barry
Cochineal and tannin dyed linen from here

In the past month I have been wandering too far from things that bring me joy. Guilty of willfully entering the chaos of the current political arena. My daughter called me on it last night ... an intervention. Jude Hill reiterated the message in her post today.

My response was to wipe my Facebook and blog posts clean. Which I hasten to add does not mean I'm leaving the political world to others. Just that I will choose one activity that I think can make a difference, rather than the dozens of possibilities that have left my eye twitching. I will call my members of congress whenever I see something in the news that involves legislative action. But I will no longer haunt Facebook.

So here's my call to you (if you've gotten this far). Please leave words of peace in the comments. And if there is a color that brings you joy, please note that, too. 

In response, I will reach out privately for contact information and send you a simple peace pin, like the one shown here or one that matches the color(s) that give you joy. It will give me great joy in turn to make each one for an intended recipient, spreading the joy that Barry Smith gave me. Bringing a measure of peace.

Rust dyed muslin made two years ago here

Retro-active

First, I promised (and then forgot) to post a picture of Land of Flood and Drought once it was hanging. I ended up hanging the 2015 LoFaD on the left and the 2016 LoFaD on the right ...

I also have a belated response to Deb Sposa's "How did you do that?" comment on this post

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2017/02/showing-up.html

where I made the beginnings of a flower out of repurposed vintage handkerchiefs ...

I started with directions I found on how to make flower petals in one of the many books and Internet sites I perused. Sadly, I neglected to note which one. Anyway, I started with a 5 1/2" square of cloth ...

folded it in half ...

then folded the top right corner down ...

and the top left corner down ...

This resulted in all raw edges being on the bottom (an important consideration as this will end up on a baby quilt, so loose threads need to be avoided as they are potential choking hazards). 

A running stitch along the bottom edge (done in a contrasting color for the purposes of demonstration here) ... 

was then gathered ...

and secured by running the needle back through the gathers in the opposite direction ...

At which point the "petal" was ready to be used with the opening visible (above), or not (below) ...

It wasn't too far a leap to see the resemblance between the folded triangle of cloth and the corner of a vintage handkerchief. So I made a cover stock template with a 2 1/2" altitude and marked it onto the corner of a handkerchief ...

then cut the corner off, leaving a 1/4" margin ...

I discovered that the petals worked best when I used two handkerchief corners stitched together with perle cotton ...

after which all that remained to do was a light spritzing to remove the erasable marker lines ...

The flower pictured above has 14 pairs of petals, but I've also experimented with some alternate petal shapes and sizes ... which I'll save for another day.

Agita

I have been vibrating with anxiety, far from my new year's resolve to "enjoy." Cloth making has been adversely affected as I spend far too much time feverishly following Facebook.

Still, I did manage to stitch two plain pillows for our new couch ...

They were made from thrifted cotton/linen shirts and I'm now considering how they might be embellished ...

so they can better fit in with the Triangulation pillow that was my first Jude-inspired cloth-weaving adventure.

Meantime, 0ur daughter (who is expecting in April) brought G to our house for a sleepover ...

In spite of a tornado warning in the middle of the night, we got enough rest to find the energy for a trip to a new-to-us playground where G learned the gentle arts of swinging ...

pole-sliding ...

and public art appreciation ...

Which inspired a little home-grown creativity ...

Love the colors ...

Love child

Happy Birthday to the girl who stole our hearts 31 years ago today ...

3 year old Meg with new baby sister Melissa (1986)

Melissa Reid (14 months old)

Ashes of roses

Here's the result of yesterday's dye trial where I was hoping to achieve a pale blush color ...

Madder dye extract at 3% WOF (weight of fiber) with an overdye of Himalayan rhubarb extract dye bath that had already been used to dye another batch of cloth (called an exhaust bath maybe?)

Just for grins, I laid the spiraled petals on top of yesterday's handkerchief blossom ...

Hmmm. Well, I'll see what my daughter thinks before I start stitching anything down.

Today was the last day of this old shed ...

It looks okay in this picture, but the wood was rotting and everything in it was moldy, rusty, or both due to humidity. So we paid Junk Dogs to break it down and haul it away to recycling ...

leaving us with a much better view ...

Showing up

Cloth first. I'm in the process of auditioning cloth blossoms for a baby quilt. The most recent effort (which does not yet have a center to conceal the gathering), was made from vintage handkerchiefs ...

Close up ...

and back ...

Now I'm auditioning some possible dye colors to pull everything together, so stay tuned for more.

Mirrored

There's a holiday coming up, so I once again did handmade cards with Griffin for his preschool class. This year I asked him to write his name, then impressed the reverse image onto a bit of foam tray saved from the grocery store ...

and stamped it onto the back of each of his cards ...

Sweet.

Backing it up

Land of Flood and Drought 2016 is done ...

Hard to capture because it's 53" long and 7" wide ...

But these slightly closer views of the front ...

and the back are a little bit clearer ...

So here's what came to me in the middle of the night that pushed me to get this done: I realized the total annual rainfall of 50.8" was close to the length of the cloth. So I drew a line with water erasable marker showing each month's cumulated rainfall using the 1" patches as a grid from the beginning of the year at the bottom ...

through the end of the year at the top ...

and everything in between, with the seams between the patches standing in for the fractured limestone that is such a critical part of our local aquifers ...

The cloth was quilted using no.12 and no.8 perle cotton (thank you Judy Martin), a middle layer of harem cloth (thank you Jude Hill), and a backing of linen. Which is to say, it's more sturdy than drape-y.

After it was completely quilted, I trimmed back the harem cloth ...

folded the backing cloth away from the front edge and ladder stitched the two together ...

Resulting in this, front ...

and back ...

The final step was trimming the excess backing to a rough 1/4" from the seam, then snipping and fraying to achieve a stable raw edge ...

Now all that remains is creating sleeves at the top and bottom for the wooden supports Don cut for me. I'll be sure to post a picture once it's hanging.