- Close Your Eyes: The final chapter of the first edition

It's a book ... which is not just the title of my favorite toddler board book, but also the result of my most recent endeavor in stitch ...

Of course, a printed book would have a dedication page, but due to space limitations, this blog post will have to suffice:

Dedicated to Jude Hill
with much appreciation
for her artistry and inspiration

Because as I stitched the final page, I realized that Close Your Eyes had become a virtual sampler of the many innovative stitches and techniques gleaned from Jude's incredible online classes on Spirit Cloth.

First, here are the overview shots: the a-sides, if you will, to the b-sides shown in the last post ...
 

Then the close-up shots, with notes in the captions that detail the techniques, stitches, and back stories ...

Cloth weaving anchored with invisible baste, Kantha stitch (aka running stitch), split back stitch

Wrap stitch (aka satin stitch) and Kantha stitch (aka running stitch)
I never would have thought to use a tattered edge like this before Spirit Cloth 101

Closer view of split back stitch on a setting sun discharge dyed with bleach

Full moon discharge dyed with bleach on denim
Back stitch worked from the reverse side, see details in this post

A bit of silk tie from Don's school administrator days
spinning through a galaxy of thread bead stars

The back side of some rust dyeing and a picture of Melissa and Jace
inkjet printed on cotton fabric and attached with invisible baste and blanket stitch

Text hand lettered with a Pitt pen and back stitched with a single strand of floss

Each page was connected to
the spine with ladder stitching

Interior view of ladder stitch in the spine (top pulled tight, bottom left loose to show detail)

Cloth label hand lettered in Pitt pen and back stitched

Interior label lettered in Pitt pen on cotton cloth from a threadbare shirt of my mom's
that I wore as a nightshirt virtually every day of the six years following her death in 2008.
First repurposed here when I began following Spirit Cloth, a part of it will now be passed on to her great-grandson.

- February 14: B-sides being Valentine's Day

I can tell you exactly what I had to eat for lunch on Valentine's Day twenty-nine years ago: a Belgian waffle with vanilla Haagen Dazs ice cream and hot fudge sauce. Then I took a long nap and when I woke up, it was snowing. By 8:00 Don insisted we go to the hospital before the snow got any deeper ... a few hours later Melissa Reid entered the world.

Which is why this is what we had for dessert tonight ...

Yes, I did add tart cherries in a soft creamy mousse this time around ... seemed like the color was just right for Melissa's birthday (around here we call February 14th "Valentine's Day" at our peril).

And it was also noteworthy that Jace's lullaby book took a leap forward, with all twelve pages now complete and stitched together along their individual spines ...

The next step will be to secure the other three edges of each pair, but before concealing the b-sides I took one last look at each two-page spread from the inside ...

With any luck, I'll be done by the end of the week ... just in time to head to St. Louis.

- The main reason I'm proud to be a William and Mary alum ...

My brother Art, a retired FDNY lieutenant, posted this video on Facebook calling it Jon Stewart's finest moment. I quite agree.

And while the Daily Show will reportedly go on after Jon Stewart leaves later this year, he will be one tough act to follow.

- A stitch in time: Tailoring 101

Judy Martin posted a series of photographs of a Normal School Sewing Book that triggered a memory of this long-forgotten notebook ...

Fourteen years after I left my position as Needleworker at Colonial Williamsburg to become a librarian, I took a one-day class in tailoring techniques led by former Historic Trades cohort Rick Hill. Intended to showcase the skills needed by the staff of the Costume Design Center, it was a brief return to stitch at a time when I was fully involved with the planning and building of the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library.

Here's my professional librarian self looking very busy in the old library just before we moved ...

And here's the building that we moved to ...

One year after the tailoring class, I left my corner office (the lovely ten foot window at the lower left) to become a school librarian. But that's another story.

Looking at the notebook now, I realize how much I had neglected my stitching at the time ...

By the way, it's important to note these were all tailoring techniques ... 

Underhand hemstitch

which can be somewhat different from needlework or embroidery, as in this cross stitch example ...

Although apparently a backstich is a backstitch, is a backstitch ...

These are the pages in their entirety, as captured on the scanner. Note that the white fabric is a loose woven linen and the blue fabric is a heavy felted wool ...

Including several pages that we obviously didn't get to in the one short day of the class ...

The last of which is most intriguing: a combination running and back stitch ...

I wonder how I might make use of that ...

- Keeping it weird ...

Don whipped out a new mini-assemblage yesterday ...

A Junkology-fueled bat, totally in keeping with the "Keep Austin Weird" ethos of this place we now call home.

And may I add, as a stitcher, the extreme envy I feel seeing a piece come together in such a short time. Of course the upside is that I get to enjoy it that much sooner. 

Now ... I wonder where we should hang it ...

- Tomfoolery

Don caught some of our neighborhood Rio Grande turkeys in action ...