Of mothers and daughters

A note before posting: It is an honor to be invited into someone's personal story. I will be forever grateful that I was entrusted with this story and its telling here.

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My older daughter's close friend, Danielle, asked if I could make something for her brother's wedding.

The bride wanted to have a label made for the groom's tie with something from his mother's wedding gown. A request made more poignant as Danielle and her brothers lost their mom when they were quite young.

Danielle wondered if I could do that, and likewise make a label for the bride's wedding gown. 

Yes and yes ... although as the project progressed, the bride's label became a handkerchief instead, the project written about in Past is prologue.

As I stitched, I asked Danielle if she could send a picture of her mom wearing the wedding gown I was working with ...

A gown so much like my own ... vintage 1970s chiffon, long sleeves, and simple lace. Her mother's smile.

Next I asked the spelling of her mother's name, to which Danielle replied ...

Jackie carried daisies, as did the lace on her gown ...

a gown edged in lace that magically morphed into a "J," the groom's first initial ...

And so I stitched a bit of lace to the fragile chiffon, turning under the edges and securing them with silken overcast stitches for the groom's tie label ...

Then attached lace daisies to the bride's handkerchief and stitched eyelet initials and the date to commemorate their wedding ...

And finally, for Danielle, stitched the name she shares with her mother and her daughter ...

onto a handkerchief for her to carry when her 6 year-old son and 1 year-old daughter serve as attendants in their uncle's wedding ...

Three gifts ...

made with love for a wonderful family ...

Danielle and Charlotte Therese

Page 5 of Moon Myth

Fiona made a wonderful comment about this story growing along with the moon. Totally unintentional on my part, as the best metaphors usually are.

This two-day old moon is part of another Outer Banks memory ...

Rain stitched with Deb Lacativa's thread in shades of gray (I just ordered more)

with an added bit of story as it was stitched with some of the silk I purchased for the wedding handkerchief project. More on that tomorrow.

Two more bases and a full moon rising

The bases have been stitched for page 6,  waxing crescent ...

which will face page 7, waxing quarter ...

The colors in these pictures aren't true, but since they're just placeholders, I won't obsess.

And last night, I caught sight of the rising full moon from our front window. The view blocked by trees, I wandered down the driveway (about the length of a football field) and up the street (another football field or two) until I reached an unobstructed bit of horizon.

The color had already washed out of the road and trees around me, but the moon glowed golden in the twilit sky. Mars glimmered redly close by and as I walked back to the house, I noted Saturn and Jupiter strung like jewels across the darkening vault. Only the murmurings and rustlings of creatures in the gloaming (not to mention the lack of a proper flashlight) kept me from walking out to the floodplain. But surely Venus hung in the West, so it too will be a part of this nascent cloth ...

Moon Myth continues to grow

Here's how page 4 ended up (for now) ...

Working from this base ...

Then adding strips of cloth, some leftover from the pennant I dream of a world where love is the answer made for Mo's project ...

The honest studio tour

I'm jumping on the honest studio tour bandwagon begun by Dee Mallon and seconded by Deb Lacativa.

To give it a bit of perspective, you should know that Don and I live in a two bedroom house with all of about 1800 square feet. It's not a stretch to say that my "studio" flows through more than half that space (much more, Don would say).

The epicenter is my thread nest, aka overstuffed rocker and matching armchair, which are actually pretty tidy at the moment ..

It is overseen by pieces from Don's garage studio and gifts from Kindred Spirits, including the aforementioned Dee, plus Anna Lisa, Louise, Barry ...

Hazel ...

Jude and Sue, currently tangled up in Deb's threads ...

plus a bit of overflow into our third (rarely used) armchair, from which one can espy gifts from Mo and Grace and Fiona ...

And really, that should be enough. But wait, there's more! My cloth storage facility resides in the master bedroom ...

Likewise overseen by yet more gifts made by Bronwyn, Saskia, Fiona and Sandy, in a nest from Gillan ...

When I'm "into" a project, the cloth often ends up like this ...

although I aspire to emulate Marie Kondo-style folding ...

I do confess to owning a 1970s vintage Kenmore sewing machine, but it doesn't get used much ... 

Our bedroom also holds a craft supply pantry ...

and bookshelf ...

both of which overflowed into other spaces long ago.

So on to the master bath which doubles as my ironing room ...

where the one-time vanity holds an array of stuff ...

Likewise the laundry room, because nature abhors the vacuum of horizontal surfaces ... 

Then there's the tech center, which includes a nifty HP scanner/printer/copier (and yes, that's the master bedroom again) ...

wirelessly connected to the laptop that comes out every morning as I journey through blog-land after reading the Austin American Statesman online for breakfast ...

accompanied by the white-hot heat of early morning Texas sun streaming through the front door.

Last, but not least, my traveling studio, aka stitch bag is currently sitting on the other end of the dining room table ...

with the piece of Barry's metalwork artistry that began my journey into peace gifting, seen here peeking out from beneath my latest (and previously unblogged) bit of cloth revision.

Phew, enough is enough.

Tag ... you're it!

Past is prologue

I'm working on a project right now ...

I'd call it a commission, but as I have declined any monetary compensation, it is better considered a gift.

The full story will be told later, but this is the back story of its making (quite literally, as this is indeed the back) ...

I am stitching eyelet initials on a vintage handkerchief, which is most likely linen. Originally I was attempting to stitch the initials in an imitation of the font on a wedding invitation, but the results looked amateurish. I tried and tried with every fiber in my cloth pantry: fine linen thread, cotton floss, plied silk untwisted into a single strand. I tried split backstitch and plain backstitch. I tried different fonts. Nada.

It had everything to do with the handkerchief. So after a design consult with my oldest daughter, I decided to go back to my colonial marking stitch roots and headed out to stock up on supplies. Seeking the finest silk possible, I asked for direction from a helpful employee at Needleworks in Austin. Peering at the proffered handkerchief she opined "70 count?" 

"Probably," I replied (while making a mental note to check the count later) and then went on to select four silks and three needles to try ...

The John James needles, usually my go-to needles of choice, were quickly eliminated. Likewise the first three silks, of which one was too white, another too fuzzy, the third too heavy. The last silk tried was best, hugging the gossamer strands of the (confirmed) 80-count handkerchief. Even so, the crossed stitches sat too high on the cloth.

And so, eyelets ... each composed of eight stitches ... each stitch ideally worked over three gossamer strands of the handkerchief ... or two, or four (it's hard to tell sometimes) ...

The camera focus shuddered on this last image, moving in and out, much as my eyes do while working. Thank goodness I'm as near-sighted as I am. Even so, I can't work more than a few hours at a time. I'm on day four or five at this point.

All this (and the full story yet to be told) awakened me this morning with a thought. So I pulled out the wicker basket in the back of our closet, dug down to the bottom, and unfolded a sheet-wrapped bundle to try this on ...

I can honestly say I weigh the same as in 1977, but these days the zipper couldn't possibly be closed without tearing something. Sadly, gravity and childbearing seem to have moved significant portions of my anatomy south.

So I'll leave you with this vintage image instead ...

and a promise to tell more of how this project came to be ... later, when it is done.

  

Speaking of time

This was the original page 2, but it works much better as page 3 ...

With thanks to Deb Lacativa for the variegated grays ...

A new(er) page 2

As I stitched what was supposed to be page 3 of Moon Myth, the story began to rearrange itself. And so page 3 became page 2 ...

As expected, that in turn influenced page 1 ...

The new page 2 owes much to the artistic influence of Hazel Monte at Handstories, being strewn with stars (which is absolutely harder to do than she makes it look) ...

But as I held the cloth in hand, it became clear the the beautifully figured bit of Deb Lacativa cloth was woefully unstable in its reverse appliquéd state. So I added more bits of Deb's cloth and stitched them down with Deb's magical thread, which is currently available here (but going fast) ...

Once again channeling Hazel's modus operandi as best I could, I ended up with a serviceable Mother Earth ...

Thank goodness for Kindred Spirits!

Rough drafting

I learned the hard way that it's best to check assumptions sooner rather than later. So I'm now testing my scanning and photo-editing for the Moon Myth pages, which are in various stages of completion. Note: the cloths have not yet been blocked, so these images are rough indeed ...

Page 1 - Sun and Moon

Page 2 - Father Time

Page 3 - Mother Earth and Moon

Page 4 - Day 1 Sunset

Page 5 - Day 2 Rainstorm

Page 8 - Day 11 Thunderstorm

Page 15 - The End