- Deep knowing

Feel something in your bones, know what to look for ...

Patch #57: indigo-dyed linen from a vintage table cloth

know what to listen for ...

then shield your eyes as you look into the sun and blindly point the camera at the sky ...

because, yes ... the sandhill cranes are headed north again.

- Takin' it easy

I realized today that I should do a belated patch about making Valentines with the grandkids. The original projects consisted of meat-tray styrofoam heart stamps slicked with washable markers (just the thing for 3-year-old fingers).

Today's version was stamped with Soft Scrub to discharge the color from the raspberry linen used on the first February patch ...

Patch #56

I think the one on the right looks like a classic sugar heart, but as you can see, there's still a bit of stitching to do. Not tonight.

After an exceptional dinner of blue toro and wagyu nigiri, two orders of shumai (steamed pork and steamed shrimp dumplings), and tuna tataki salad at A-Tan Bistro, we are awaiting the beginning of a Mystiqueros concert ...

Someone in the line gave us an extra ticket (our offer to pay for it was met with "pay it forward") and the person in front of us just showed us the set list ...

And I just found way too many typos in the above text, surely attributable to the nigori sake that I had with dinner (others most likely lurk unfound). So away I go ...

- The geography of broken hearts

As promised, today was a two-fer patch day ...

Yesterday's make-up Patch #54 and today's Patch #55 (Revised 2/28/2016)

and therein lies a story. I went out on a picture walk a few days ago. "Picture walk" is a term from my elementary school librarian days. I used to talk through the pictures in a book with early readers as a way to help them understand the storyline before trying to decode the words on the page. These days I use the term with my three year old grandsons when presented with a text-heavy book ... we talk through the pictures instead.

Anyway, as I headed out Don called after me, "It's raining."

"I know," was my reply. After all, it was just spritzing. Nothing to worry about.

So, there I was picture walking through the floodplain, trying to get a sense of story. And among the pictures I took was this one of the soil cracking for want of water ...

"I'll have to come back to this spot after it rains some more," I thought.

The next day, Nancy Erisman at Pomegranate Trail posted a picture of a heart-shape captured in her parking lot at work ... you can go take a look here if you missed it. Anyway, it reminded me of the cracked earth ... so much so that I went back to my picture looking for a cracked heart. Do you see it?

The original picture has been cropped and rotated ... the heart is middle right

Even though I didn't have the right color linen with me in Austin today, the idea took hold in my mind and insisted on coming out of my fingers, thinking all the while how cool it is that someone's words in California triggered this ...

I still have to add bits of leafy green and tiny blue star flowers a la Cindy Monte at Handstories (and no, that's not the name of the flowers ... it's just what they look like to me). But the sun is slowly sinking down, so I'll save the finish for tomorrow when the colors will be easier to pick out.

One other thing got done today: another blue jean patch for G, this time in University of Texas longhorn orange ...

This is actually burnt orange, believe it or not

Which reminds me of a story. Since G had already learned the Star Spangled Banner, I asked him if he had also learned the Texas pledge of allegiance. He pondered for a moment, then broke out in song, "The eyes of Texas are upon you, all the livelong day ...  

Look out longhorns, he's getting ready to join the team ...

- A little rain'll do

For the first time in nearly two months I don't have a new patch.

Fortunately, there was rain in the gauge this morning, so at least there's that to show ...

Tomorrow will just have to be a two-fer.

- Unearthed

They say rocks don't rise up out of the soil. Rather, the soil is washed away, thereby exposing the rocks ... un-earthing them.

Patch #53: Rust-dyed linen

The story behind today's patch is actually two stories. It began when Don found an unusual rock on the floodplain, surely a fossil.

"Look it up," I suggested. And so he did, finding first an image ...

Fossil a-side

and then a description ...

Fossil b-side

that both seemed to fit what he had in hand. Pleurotomaria glenrosensis most likely, since the Glen Rose formation outcrops in our area. And the Lower Cretaceous dating also fits with our location in Hays County  (although I was later proved to be incorrect as my college roommate showed this post to my Paleontology prof who dissed my ID) ...

How old does that make it? 100-145 million years old. Definitely worthy of a commemorative patch ... but how?

I started pawing through piles of cloth (no other word for my search methodology), which yielded some potentially interesting dye experiments on muslin. Still, they weren't exactly what I had in mind, so I headed back to look some more. And there on the floor, I spotted a small scrap of rusted cloth that had worked its way loose from the overlying cloth strata. I recognized it as a one-time contender for a compass rose on Triangulation ...

but fortunately, it didn't make the cut for that project. Because really, when turned to the back it became the perfect solution ...

Wouldn't you say?

- A questionable day

"Can you patch a hole in G's jeans?" Meg asked.

"No problem," I replied. "But do you have any jeans with a hole in them that G can't wear any more?"

Meg didn't blink an eye (my family is getting used to my quest for daily patch components) ... minutes later I had a perfectly worn pair in hand, all the better for having been broken in by both G and J.

I cut around the hole, the gossamer denim shape-shifting even after being pinned down. No matter. It made a perfect patch ...

Patch #52

"G! Can you come over to your new garden and show me your gloves?"

"Can I go back to help Pop Pop now?"

"Sure thing! Wait, can you slow down?"

"Now can you stand over here so I can take another picture?"

Nice work!

- 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.

- Hooked on appliqué

I confess that I began this yesterday, when I spotted the first Goldeneye on the floodplain ...

Patch #50

One of my goals with the daily patch project is to document the approximate first appearance of our wildflowers. I was caught without my iPhone camera, so this patch was crafted using an image printed from the Wildflower Center's online guide ...

As you might imagine, I was happy beyond words to see how well Deb Lacativa's cloth worked, so I drew the image outline with a Pitt pen ...

then appliquéd it to a gray green linen, mindful of the statement about color from the Arts & Crafts Textiles book by Ann Wallace ...

I won't necessarily do future flower patches as precisely as this, since abstracting forms sounds like a fun challenge. Maybe I'll even do one back-to-front ...

'cause I do love b-sides

Addendum: 

After mending J's jeans last week, I  decided I should probably look to my own. Not only were they shredding above the patched knees, but there was a mysterious spot of something that resisted all attempts at laundering ...

Glue maybe? Whatever it is has an annoying look and feel to it ... well worth covering over.

Anyway, I realized how far I've come as I quickly stitched on patches ...

confident that two threads here, one thread there, and a combination of back and running stitches would do the trick.

- Stickley speaking

Last June we visited friends in Richmond, Virginia who have a 100-year old Craftsman bungalow. With its modern day Stickley furnishings and period details, I was smitten.Then Martha and Gary came to visit us this fall, during which time they rued missing the changing of the ginkgo leaves in their neighborhood.Ever since, I've found myself trolling through Pinterest looking at Arts and Crafts textiles, particularly those depicting ginkgo leaves. Today I finally tried my hand at a Stickley-inspired appliqué ...

Patch #49

which I hope to use as a jumping-off point for the Texas cottonwood leaf to the left (among other things). Rather than the coarse linen backing and heavy chain stitch outline recommended by Stickley, I used a fine linen/cotton thrifted table cloth for the background and a sheer thrifted cotton skirt for the appliqué ...

I was hoping this book would provide practical details ...

but in the end, it was Stickley himself who provided the guidance I needed in his book Craftsman Fabrics and Needlework. I copied, scaled up and printed the image of a ginkgo leaf table runner, cut out one leaf, and traced lightly around it onto the cotton using a Pitt pen ...

The image pixelated, but that wasn't a problem

After cutting it out, I pinned it to the linen/cotton patch ...

and stitched it down, followed by an outline worked in Jude's split backstitch with a single strand of floss (which she aptly calls "splitting hairs") ...

I'm very happy with the end result, front ...

and back ...

and am now considering how to render this beautiful cottonwood leaf souvenir from last year's trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico ...

P.S. I also updated Patch #39 ...

which was far more fun than I had on February 8th.