A wee bit o' magic

One more, one more

You may recall the placket cloth bag I made last year. If not, you can take a quick peek at this index entry to refresh your memory ...

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/search/label/Placket%20cloth

[Note: you'll need to scroll down a bit as the "placket cloth" posts will include this one]

This is what the placket cloth has become, front ...

and back ...

It was the undoing of the old ...

that enabled the remaking of the new ...

So now I have retired my commercially made stitch bag and will use this one instead. Don is already shaking his head imagining what I will look like when I carry both bags at the same time ...

Highly visible, I'd say ...

Feeling more like myself

I am grateful to India Flint for the insights I received during her bagstories project. And I will honor her request not to divulge the construction techniques provided in her private Facebook workshop.

That said, I do want to share part of the journey that led to the creation of this bag ...

As you can see, it is somewhat larger than the bag on the right, which was constructed following India's original instructions ...

But those of you who have been reading this blog for a while will most likely recognize its roots in the Remember 2016 cloth, which utilized Jude Hill's paperless piecing technique ...

Indeed, the first patches in this new bag were trial bits from Remember 2016. Others were remains of last year's Peace Pin Project. And some were made from cloth gifted by Kindred Spirits. Most are linen, either thrift store bought or vintage clothing and linens from my past.

There were even several abandoned slow stitch projects pulled out and finally put to good use ...

Speaking of which ... I recently went through my scraps, discarding many that were too small and/or too shredded to be of much use. But in going through the myriad bits and pieces, I realized that I recognized each one ... where it came from and what project it was used in. The memories that were triggered astonished me. 

So it is that this bag has become a holder of memory. Point to any patch and I dare say I can spin a story (or two or three). In the days to come, I may do just that. But for now, I will rest in the satisfaction of its wholeness and in sharing that here.

Addendum:

First Golden Eye ...

Agarita ...

and Bitterweed ...

Alchemy

Spring is coming to the Hill Country after a hard (for us) winter ...

and so, as I am wont to do, I walked the land. Then returned to find this post

https://itscrowtime.wordpress.com/2018/02/27/martis-pennant-for-the-dream-is-on-its-way/

over at Mo's blog. Marti's pennant of cloth dyed from the land and her words invoking alchemy.

Coincidentally, before I walked, I had begun my own dye-play using windfall galls from the live oaks, their previous inhabitants long since gone. I wrapped the galls in thrifted linen, tying them off with a variegated thread that I hope will bleed. Then dipped the whole in warm black tea and hung the results in the Texas persimmon ...

Note: this was spectacularly unsuccessful!

After which I walked, surveying our latest prickly pear cactus whacking ...

the end product of which will be more berms ...

within which the alchemy of sun and rain will disintegrate the grass-topped mounds into the black gold of compost ..

Likewise, the mistletoe-choked cedar elm has been safely downed and chipped by arborists, soon to line the trails that meander through our land ...

Walking down the east trail I came to the cactus corral ...

Once a bare patch clotted with cactus, it is now full of grasses and the bright green promise of thimble flowers.

The burn pit is also full of brush cut back to make way for more prairie grasses ...

Beyond it, the floodplain is beginning to bloom ...

As my eye scanned the land seeking the first golden eye, it caught instead on an intriguing spiral of stone ...

Nearby, the last remnants of a much-needed rain ...

A flicker of color led me to the corner of the property where surveyor's tape fluttered ...

marking the edge of the land now owned by our someday next door neighbors, our bid having been too little to secure the acreage for ourselves.

But we have more than enough here and always there is something ...

Picking up the empty shell, I wondered at its one-time inhabitant. Had it perished on the droughted floodplain? How ironic those two words are. But water is the key to our land of flood and drought. 

Which is why the avian font (Barry's term, much more appealing than "bird bath") is drunk dry by the deer as often as not ...

Filling it ...

I noted yet another flutter from the corner of my eye ...

a black butterfly with iridescent blue spots above ...

and an orange/red spot below, just visible as it flew away. I will have to look it up.

But for now, I am sitting beside Don's newest garden ...

waiting for the almost-full moon to rise in the east and hoping to hear the call of Sandhill cranes as my Remember 2016 cloth reminds me 

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016_02_26_archive.html

they come at the end of February ...

as surely as spring follows winter.

For the boys

We got toy cash registers for our grandsons recently, complete with toy money and (gasp) credit cards. I'm pretty sure the Fisher Price cash register we got for our daughters didn't have a slot for swiping a credit card, but for modern day kids it is what it is. So on a recent play date, I realized  play wallets might be a good addition.

"I'll make you one," I told G. Then spotted a way-cooler Spiderman wallet at Target and thought, "he'll like this better than anything I could make."

Wrong!

When we were on FaceTime G asked if I had made his wallet yet. "Something better," I said as I focused on the new wallet.

"Oh, thanks" G said and walked away.

"I don't think he liked it as much as something you would have made," Meg speculated.

Well.

Lesson learned. And since there are three grandsons, there are now three wallets made from thrifted linen ...

complete with Velcro pockets for coins ...

room for real dollar bills ...

and pockets for credit cards ...

I'm thinking they may also come in handy in the not-too-distant future as the perfect place to facilitate Tooth Fairy transactions ... imagine that!

Bagstories continued

India Flint's Facebook-based bagstories class did result in a functional bag in addition to the funky teabag bag featured in earlier posts ...

It presented a great opportunity to use some eco-dyed muslin from a couple of years ago which was inspired by India Flint's Bundle Book, using a process detailed in this post.  I tore the dyed muslin into strips and paper-less pieced it (thanks Jude) into 2.75" squares ...

Onion skin eco-dye

which I stitched together, back-to-back ...

Thimble flower eco-dye

Then stitched the squares together along the inside edges and realized I needed to reinforce the seams. Which gave me the perfect excuse for using Deb Lacativa's "Dirty Threads" ...

 

I also dove into a collection of vintage buttons looking for a closure. I have no idea if this is shell or celluloid, but it seemed to fit ...

And lucky me ... since there were lots of scraps leftover, I got to piece them together into a handle ...

I'm realizing that paper-less piecing gives me such great pleasure ... thanks again Jude.

Tea time

Here's my first go at making something out of tea bags ...

I'm really not at all sure what to call it, nor do I have any sense of what to do with it ...

except maybe just leave it where the light can shine through ...

And don't you just love Deb Lacativa's Dirty Threads?

Tea bag

India Flint has just published a new book entitled bagstories and is running an online class on Facebook. Never one to do things exactly as detailed, I decided to try making my bag out of used tea bags, with the following result (so far) ...

I'm not accustomed to working dimensionally, so while I was very comfortable stitching the first part of the project, here shown inside ...

and out ...

I really have no earthly idea where it's headed next.

By the way, the stitching was done with Deb Lacativa's "Dirty Threads." I was delighted to read in her post today 

http://morewgalo.blogspot.com/2018/02/dirty-threads.html

that she plans to be dyeing more in the Spring!