- Working both sides: Sunset to sunrise

I alluded to a middle-of-the-night brainstorm at the end of this post that ended up on the sunset page of Close Your Eyes 2  ...

The back story (pun intended) relates to the James Taylor album Mud Slide Slim, on which You Can Close Your Eyes originally appeared. Released in 1970, that album became the soundtrack of my high school years. 

So it wasn't surprising as I stitched Close Your Eyes that music and lyrics from other songs came drifting back (especially Soldiers, which was mentioned in this post-Christmas reverie). Soldiers came back to me once again the other night, but this time it was the opening lyrics that stuck in my head. They seemed like a perfect story-starter ...

It was just after sunrise and down by the sea
Down in the sand flats where nothing will grow
Come drumming and footsteps like out of a dream
Where the golden green waters come in ... (what comes next?)

Then it hit me. One of the hardest things for me to do is stitch irregularly; I get into a rhythm and the stitches just fall into regular patterns. Not so my handwriting, which is about as irregular as my stitches are even. So what if I took advantage of my wonky handwriting for once?

That's how I came to write the sunrise lyrics from Soldiers onto the back of the sunset page. Thoroughly enjoying the freedom of writing less-than-perfectly, I then backstitched to my heart's content ...

Which resulted in perfectly irregular layers of sunset-lit clouds underlain by a grassy meadow composed of the closing lyrics ...

I remember quite clearly when I got out of bed
I said "Oh good morning, what a beautiful day."

I asked Don what he thought about the basting stitches ... leave them in or take them out? His first thought was that the vertical lines above the sun looked like buildings, so ... Perfect! The whole idea of the B-sides is to prompt new stories. Who knows where this one might go?

The second of six two-page spreads is now complete, A-sides ...

and B-sides ...

I'm pleased enough with the end result that I'll be going back to the James Taylor catalog for the B-side of the rising moon page.

Any guesses?  (Hint: this time I'm not using Mud Slide Slim)

- Oh snap! Or, you learn something new every day

The first two-page spread of Close Your Eyes 2 is done, A-sides ...

and B-sides ...

As you can see by the color quality, it's a gray day here, but that plus Don's willingness to do the shopping left me plenty of time for stitching.

The front cover came first, with Roy G Biv colors for Griffin, who just learned red + yellow = orange (his favorite color) ...

Then I turned to the B-side, with a second title still undecided:

• Two Sides to Every Story?
• Every Picture Tells a Story?
• Both Sides Now?
• The Inside Story?
• Or, or, or ... what?

Here's what ultimately flowed out of the Pitt pen onto the the verso of the title page ...

After which I ladder stitched the cover to the first page along what will become the spine.

And as I prepared to sew the snaps onto the corners, I realized I had no clue about how to proceed. None!

Fortunately, there were Instructions for Attaching ...

Which I'm quite sure Don's Nana never bothered to read. How silly it would have seemed to her ... everyone knows how to sew on a snap, right? Not anymore!

And as I stitched each fiddly piece, there was no "Aha!" moment of recollection, no muscle memory ... the task was totally new to me. Cora Inman Ackert surely would have shaken her head over that, but hopefully she would have approved the final product, as I always admired her and valued her opinion ...

Coda: Don's Nana passed away over thirty years ago, shortly after her great-granddaughter Meg was born. I think these pictures in her button box may be of Cora and her parents (although I'm not sure, there are no notes on the back) ...

The things we leave behind ...

If that's true, then the woman in the pictures would be Don's great-grandmother, my daughters' great-great-grandmother and my grandkids' great-great-great grandmother.

Though her name is lost in time, a small scrap of her story is now stitched into mine ...

- Looking inward: Close Your Eyes 2 continues

I found a treasure in the wooden cigar box that belonged to Don's Nana ...

Twelve beautiful brass snaps ... exactly what I need to make the inner pages accessible in Griffin's lullaby book.

I'm having crazy fun working the a-sides with an eye to the b-sides ...

Even the "problem" of the extra stress that snaps will put on the corners is a fun mental puzzle. For now, I'm adding cloth reinforcement to the edges without concealing the b-side stitches that already exist ...

And because every action causes an equal and opposite reaction, the construction of the spine is being rethought, too ...

Last, but far from least, I had a middle-of-the-night brainstorm about the b-sides of the setting sun and the rising moon, but showing will work better than telling so that will have to wait for another day.

- Bare earth clothed

We've been helping my daughter and son-in-law prep their South Austin condo in anticipation of putting it on the market this spring.

The retaining wall above their driveway didn't always look like this ...

The patch of ground below the wall would get scoured whenever it rained hard. So we put in some water breaks (brakes?) and added 1/2 cubic yard of Thunder Dirt (a mix of local soil, compost and decomposed granite) ...

Creating a rim of rock around each sprinkler head ...

As well as another water break further downslope ...

All capped off with a thick layer of hardwood mulch and some repurposed agaves ... 

Still to be added: feather grasses and Spanish daggers transplanted from our Hill Country digs once the weather moderates a little more.

Now we just have to wait and see how it all holds up to the next gulley-washer.

- Re-vision: New pictures for Close Your Eyes

When I did the first edition of the lullaby book, I printed photos of my daughters with Jace and Griffin on a commercial cotton cloth on an adhesive backing designed to go through the inkjet printer. The quality wasn't great, but the pictures were adequately recognizable.

Of course, after finishing Jace's book, I found an inkjet canvas that worked much better, so that was what I used for Griffin's book ...

It made the photo in Jace's book pale by comparison (literally), so I cut Jace's picture out, printed a new picture and slid it into the resulting hole ...

The resulting edge is a little wonky, but the picture quality is much better ...

And as Don pointed out, the whole book is wonky, so it all works.

- Metaphor?

The ground of our Hill Country home is littered with rock ...

The grasses grow up around it, but the trees seemingly grow right through it ...

Pushing stone out of the way, reaching up to the light. And where they meet, the stone pushes back ...

But the tree persists ...

Heals its wounds and keeps going ...

- Variations on a theme: Close Your Eyes, the second edition

The text of Griffin's lullaby book will be the same as Jace's, but the images will be revised ... re-visioned ... taking lessons learned the first time around and turning them into another way of getting to the same place.

For instance, after a chorus of comments about the b-sides shown here, I decided the new edition will be made with the intention of showing both sides ...

Unlike the first spinning old world that was silk appliqued onto denim,
in this version I basted the silk onto muslin, cut a mask in the denim, then appliqued the denim onto the silk/muslin

Which means I'm burying all the knots where they can't be seen ...

I tend to work a little tight (it's a personal issue), but I'm okay with the puffiness of the center ...
it gives the inner circle an interesting sense of movement on both the back and the front,
which is why I liberated the silk from the invisible baste stitches that held it down during the applique process.

But as I added thread bead stars to the spinning old world, I realized I could have made the invisible baste more visible in the first place and saved myself going back a second time. 

So I intentionally made the white invisible basting stitches more visible around the rising moon ...

Since the invisible baste is worked with a single strand, the stars appear as pinpoints

It's subtle, but I like how the back looks and feels ...

BTW, this page is not yet complete ... there are tree branches yet to be added  as they were here

- 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.