Wednesday, February 22, 2017

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
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 ...