Still pinching myself

We were supposed to go to the opening on Friday night ...

but since the forecast called for 5" of rain we chickened out. So Don and I went today instead ...  

And while you can't necessarily tell from my expression (I'm not fond of having my picture taken) ...

I was really happy to be there, to witness my first-ever piece accepted into an art exhibit ...

The exhibit label text was spare, but there were more details in the artist statements and bios ...

And just in case it doesn't zoom in sufficiently, I wanted to be sure this got seen ...

I'll post more later ...

hopefully with links to some of the artists. It really was quite a wonderful show, with over 80 works created by artists across Texas plus another dozen or so from out of state.

I was honored to be counted among them.

Sampling a life in stitches, 2018

I recently joined the Fiber Artists of San Antonio (FASA) and volunteered to do a five minute "show and tell" at the April meeting. Only five minutes?! Anyway, I decided to (try to) do a sampling of how my work has changed over the years, beginning with how I learned to stitch as a kid and the last kit I ever did when I was in college ...

The Chase Sampler, 1970s

Then moving on to my time as the Needleworker for Colonial Williamsburg in the early 1980s, when I taught students how to stitch silk on linen samplers ...

 

while making canvaswork ...



and marking linens  ...



Followed by my library career days, when I only made time to stitch when on vacation ...



as recounted in the post Sampling life: a family in stitches.

Culminating with my retirement, when I realized that cross stitch samplers were no longer what I wanted to do, after one last go at it ...



But I'm most looking forward to recounting how I found Jude Hill's Spirit Cloth and a lively blog community of stitchers: the Kindred Spirits who have sustained me ever since (many of their blogs can be found in the right side bar). Jude's online workshop Spirit Cloth 101 led to the creation of my now preferred modus operandi, which I refer to as "patchplay" ...



the development of which was documented during the creation of Prairie-tea-dyed cloth Land of Flood and Drought 2015 (best understood by going to the end of the 19 or so posts and reading them chronologically).

That in turn led me to Remember 2016, my favorite sampler to date, which shows the way I now learn by playing ...

 

one day at a time ...



And so it continues ...

bagstories

- Land of Flood and Drought - 2015

Retrospective (12/3)

Patch #309 Two floods too many

Original Post

Après la secheresse ...

Land of Flood and Drought - 2015 is finally hanging ...

Just as, after a full month with no rain, the skies have opened ...

- Finished ...

Patch #240 But not done

One year to the day, the project that began as patchplay has become Land of Flood and Drought ...

Finished, which is to say backed, quilted and edged ...

64 inches long by 10 inches wide, representing over five feet of rainfall in the year 2015.

The winter/spring months of January through April ...

The first flood of May ...

The drier summer months of June through September, especially July and August when only one inch of rain fell ...

The second flood in October, one month which had rainfall equal to the entire year of 2011 ...

Ending with more dry times in November and December ...

But the cloth can also be "read" from top to bottom. The thermals and clouds in the skies ...

water flowing from Hill Country creeks to rivers ...

The earth rippling with the heat of summer sun ...

cooled by rain ...

water moving through cracks in the land ...

roots reaching for the water below ...

There's so much more I could say, so much more I could stitch. So yes, it's finished, but I hope it will never be done.

- So close

Patch #239 Land of Flood ...

It's so close I can taste it ...

Close-up: attaching a solid linen backing to a paperless pieced top using overcast stitching

like the scent of rain about to fall.

- 52 weeks ago

Patch #238 Patchplay

As I pulled out the final basting thread in Land of Flood and Drought, I had a strange feeling. So I looked back and found this post http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2015/08/more-nuts-than-usual.html from 52 weeks ago, to the day. It was the first time I invoked the phrase "Patchplay" ... the day I came up with my own funky take on Jude's paperless piecing ... the day I truly embarked on the cloth that is now almost complete, although I had no way of knowing that at the time.

A couple of months ago, I "edited" the Land of Flood and Drought by cutting off the top ...

Today I cut out two of those yellow patches as memory keepers ...

and any day now, I think I'll be showing you the finished piece. But in the meantime, feel free to check the Index to see how "Patchplay" and "Land of Flood and Drought" evolved.

- Return to the Land of Flood and Drought

Retrospective (5/28/2016)

Patch #147 ...

comes from a piece of muslin dyed with Mountain Pinks ...

last summer ...

And there's still plenty left to work that landscape piece that Grace suggested.

Original Post

Inspired by Judy Martin's recent post and armed with variegated floss, I returned to stitching on the Land of Flood and Drought ...

Plus Don's latest before ...

and after ...

Addendum: as sun streamed through the windows, we were amazed to learn on the evening news that 9" of rain fell 50 miles north of us in Austin today. 

- Oh drought!

As if it wasn't already obvious from my weather patches ...

we are officially droughted ...

the fifth driest beginning-of-the-year on record. It's ironic considering how many flood and rainfall records we set in 2015. The good news is, it's actually drizzling right now, so I'm taking a chance on a blue patch for today in hopes that there will be measurable rainfall.

Going out on the floodplain yesterday felt like walking on the moon ...

Even so, there were small patches of green to be found ...

with splashes of color ...

purple prairie verbena ...

the subject of today's patch ...

But tempting as it was to create an appliqué from this picture, the color and form looked too similar to the goldeneye phlox. 

So I decided to pull back to a wider view. Starting with a base of lichen-dyed muslin, I basted on a shred of sheer cotton skirting, then "glued" on small dots of purple cotton with liquid starch ...

After stitching the the spots down (which was quite challenging, so I'm not recommending this method quite yet), I washed out the starch, snipped the edges, and roughed up the raw edges with a lint roller ...

Patch #51

With any luck the long-touted El Niño will bring much-needed rain ... and with it, more wildflowers.

P.S. While putting in basting stitches I folded Land of Flood and Drought into a series of pockets just to see if the resulting form might work as a handbag/purse ...

and I think "yes, it would." So, another project to get started.