- I can draw?

I've tried to draw for years ... tried learning from books, and watching other people draw, and even talked my way into an upper-level drawing class in college. It didn't end well (sorta like Phil Collins' I Can't Dance, come to think of it).

As a result I long ago reached the conclusion that I can't draw.

But some time back when I made a similar statement, Mo told me about Frederick Franck's book The Zen of Seeing and said, "Caress the edges." I really liked that, although even after reading the book cover-to-cover I wasn't quite sure how.

Then Jude posted her original Magic Feather tutorial the other day and I knew I was going to have to figure out what Mo meant. So I got out my new Inktense pencils, stole a turkey feather out of Don's assemblage, and tried ...

What I tried today

The first Madder Brown feather didn't look right, so I tried some other browns until I found one that was better. Then I tried again, and actually kinda liked it ...

Inktense Bark 2000

But looking closely at the actual feather I realized that each barb (I had to look up that term) varied in color from brown to white to brown again, like ikat (poetically described here by Jude Hill) ...

It reminded me of the crewel embroidery long-and-short stitch that I learned from my Aunt Jean more than 45 years ago. She cautioned me not to follow the standard written instructions, but to vary stitch lengths to get a more natural effect ... sort of like the feather. 

So I grabbed a bit of linen patchplay, sketched another feather, and started stitching ...

Note the stitches don't line up as neatly as the actual feather (yet)

I'm not there yet, but I decided to take some pictures and document how far I've come before I go any further. Because really, I guess I can sorta draw after all.

- Hill Country colors

This is a box of rocks ... part of my morning exercise, which consisted of hauling them from the floodplain to a front garden bed. But it's the piece of cloth in the middle that has me really excited ...

Limestone (white and grey rock) and oxidized chert cobbles

along with the other pieces on the drying rack below ...

which were all dyed with Prairie Tea, which came back after a 5" rain last month ...

Notice the grass below has dried out after 4 weeks with no rain

While I was hoping for a yellow like my original Prairie Tea dyeing, I was delighted to find that results this time around reminded me of the colors on the floodplain ...

Not to mention the critters that hang out there ...

Moth(?) feeding on Snow-on-the-Mountain

The closer I looked at the marks left behind, the happier I got ...

And how about this? I bundled up all my loose patches and pinned them into a piece of yellow linen shirting, then hung the Prairie Tea-soaked bundle up to dry, resulting in some strong rust-colored marks ...

Who knows where this may lead ...

West Trail to the floodplain ... purposefully winding to minimize flood damage

- How it went and where it might go

Yesterday Jude suggested a tea moon and my mind jumped to a tea sunrise ...

made by clamping two quarters onto a bright yellow patch of linen (like the one below left), then placing a wet Bigelow Constant Comment tea bag on top and letting it dry in hopes of pulling some rose-y stained layers ...

Picture taken after drying ... the tea bag was initially upright on the linen patch

And while it wasn't exactly what I was after, still it may fit in to what is growing in my mind ...

More on those blue squares later ...

- Tea time: Wicking from the inside out

I mentioned in this post that I wanted to explore how to make patchwork seams more apparent. And I did try using my Inktense pencils to draw along the sewn edge of two patches, but I was less than thrilled with the result. I also tried painting walnut dye along the seams, hoping it would sink in. It didn't ... not the way I envisioned anyway.

Then I accidentally stumbled on the answer. Reading Jude's post about dyeing corners of cloth with indigo, I thought I'd try putting a wet, used decaf Twinings English breakfast tea bag on the corner of a too-bright yellow patch of linen to see if it would leave a triangular mark. It didn't. 

What the tea did do was migrate through the entire patch of linen. And somehow, as it dried, the color concentrated along the edges ...

I liked the effect so much that I stained three more yellow linen patches, this time using Tazo Zen green tea bags, which left lighter marks, but still pleasing. So I stitched the four patches together using a wonky variegated gold/brown/rust floss that has never before worked visually. This time it did ...

Here's a close-up view of the back ...

As you might imagine, I'll continue to play with this idea, one batch of tea at a time ...

- Change is good

Thanks to everyone who was supportive of my initial stab at naturalist blogging, and to Dana especially who commented, "Good for you. Good for trying, Good for evaluating. Good for changing course if necessary. Good for continuing if valid. Sometimes you just have to check out new paths." And so I have. One Hill Country Year has been reconfigured and you can read a bit more about it here.

Meanwhile, I'm tremendously excited by the changes over at Spirit Cloth and am looking forward to seeing what the future holds. I looked back at my own blog and was surprised to find that it has been a mere 17 months since I started taking Jude's online classes. At the time, I prophetically titled the post Down the Rabbit Hole ... and indeed, I ended up in Wonderland.

By the way, I'm not the only one playing with patches these days ...

One of Don's current works in progress

- Coming together: Patchplay

I've only ever made one nine-patch, so my recent patchplay has been about learning as much as about making.

Last night I started to put the trios together ...

and I think I'll keep going in this direction for a while ...

 

- Good things happen in threes

Don has completed the penultimate piece in the Front Porch Series of assemblages ...

Note: the wood is from
an old caboose

In addition to the usual cast of Junkology finds, this piece also includes part of a cuckoo clock from the Outer Banks ...

and the innards from a New Mexico Subaru radiator (thanks Grace!) ...

Meanwhile, I'm delighted to report that Claire Wellesley-Smith's new book arrived today ...

And last, but not least (after some agonizing over the fact that it occurs on Griffin's third birthday), I took the plunge and signed up for a two-day natural dyeing workshop hosted by Maura Ambrose (which my younger daughter misinterpreted when I first told her about it). So, let's call it a "cloth dyeing workshop" ...

This morning there were 14 tickets available. Last I checked it was down to 6 ... sold out!

- Diversifying ... and revising

For those who might have wondered, I'm still stitching away on my patchplay ...

but it's slow going, with not much new to show. 

At the same time, things are changing by leaps and bounds outside following the five inches of rain that fell a couple of weeks ago. So I've given in to a long-time dream of creating a naturalist journal, which will reside in part on paper as well as on a separate blog entitled One Hill Country Year.

As a result, I suspect my postings on this blog will ratchet down to a weekly basis, while postings on the new blog will be daily (and reachable using the link in the right-hand column under my profile). At least that's the plan ... we'll see how it goes.

- Three times three times three equals ... ?

I have begun to stitch my linen patches into trios ...

for no better reason than it lets me avoid committing to a plan anytime soon. And I don't have to think too hard about being random, which is sometimes hard for me to do.

The patches vary in size and shade and thread count, coming as they do from a variety of old table linens and thrifted shirts. And I'm finally trying visible seams after commenting in this post from Jude one year ago ...

Close up view of 1.5" patches

while pondering how I might make the seams even more obvious. Maybe.

For now, there are many more patches, in widths of one-and-a-quarter, one-and-a-half, and one-and-three-quarters inches (yes Grace, I'm still working at being a piece of work), but all with unmeasured lengths so none of them are exactly square except by chance ...

because I wanted to see where that might take me.

- (What) A little rain will do

We went to a Texas honky tonk last night with free tickets from our favorite radio station KNBT. If you're not familiar with the Americana music genre, the station streams live from this link and from their mobile app ... well worth a listen (although I confess that I prefer the rock end of the spectrum over the country end).

Cody Canada and Reckless Kelly opened for Robert Earl Keen. Sadly, The Departed didn't play one of my favorite songs: A Little Rain Will Do (from This is Indian Land, which usually gets slipped into the CD player when we drive through Oklahoma). But we were consoled when REK brought on longtime friend Lyle Lovett to reminisce in song about The Front Porch.

Fortunately, the weather cooperated. We've had a long, hot dry spell with virtually no rain this summer, following May's string of record-setting downpours. For the Texas Hill Country is a land of drought broken by intermittent flood. True to form, we had over five inches of rain in a couple of hours the other day, transforming the winter-like browns of dormant grasses to spring-like greens overnight.

Rain lilies poked their heads up as the water sank deep enough to wake them from their slumber ...

An unusual color variant on the usual white which, it turns out,
is actually a Rio Grande Copper Lily

Checking the detritus at the end of the driveway for oak galls, I realized for the first time how the marks in this particular piece of limestone were surely casts from shells in the long ago sea that once covered the land ...

And as we sat in the (finally!) cool breezeway, we marked the return of blossoms and butterflies (this one is probably a Gulf Fritillary) ...

Latana protected from the predations of our ever-hungry deer

not to mention the resurgence of Prairie Tea ...

I think I feel a dyein' day comin' on ...