- Dress for the weather

Patch #193 Dress for the weather

I splurged on a linen dress at the thrift store ... 

Three whole dollars!

"It'll look great on you," said the cashier.

"Oh, I'm not going to wear it," I replied. "It's going to be part of a quilt" (which is what I say when I don't have time to explain slow cloth).

When I got it home, I was beyond happy to find it really was a perfect match for my weather patch cloth ...

Imagine a sun shower ...

a foggy morning followed by a sunny afternoon ...

or a white hot Texas summer day ...

which I suppose, if you turned it 90 degrees, could have been a snow flurry in another life.

- New to us

Retrospective (7/18/2016)

Patch #192 Riley's Tavern

Original Post

It's been a while since we went out to listen to some live music (in Texas, that is). So we made our first venture to Riley's Tavern ...

which recently began a singer/songwriter concert series on Sundays from 4-7. How civilized.

One of our local favorites, Jamie Lin Wilson, was at the mic ...

and she played more than a few of my favorites: John Wayne Cowboy (about her stoic father-in-law) ... Seven Year Drought (which was released four days before the epic Memorial Day flood in Wimberley) ... and Old Oldsmobile (which we first heard in Gruene Hall as she announced the news that she was expecting her third child, due at the end of a long, hot Texas summer).

She's a great lyricist and storyteller, with a strong voice, smooth fingerpicking, and a wicked harmonica. Sadly, she needed to call out a table-full of clueless rowdies ... to the relief of all of us who really wanted to see them leave (fortunately they did) so we could better hear what she had to sing.

But you've gotta wonder when a joint posts signs like this ...

Only in Texas.

- Georgia's Window reimagined

Retrospective (7/18/2016)

Patch #191 Georgia's Window Scraps I

Original Post

When we went to Santa Fe in 2014, one of my must-see spots was the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum.

Granted it was small, but I give a lot of credit to the guards who let me stand, hands behind my back, close enough for my nearsighted eyes to truly appreciate each piece. Which was close indeed.

The painting that really grabbed me was Door Through Window ...

That it was done in 1956, the year I was born, seemed as good a reason as any to reprise its patchiness in cloth. I started on a version last year, but my supply of linen colors was less than robust and dyeing colors to match using local flora didn't go too well. So I stopped.

My recent discovery of pojagi rekindled the idea and I was delighted to find that my thrift store finds had improved the range of colors I had on hand.

So I broke the original down into component parts ...

selected a range of colors ...

and totally surprised myself at how quickly it started to come together ...

Granted, my lack of quilting and patchwork experience have left the back looking a bit worse than I'd like ...

but I'm thinking by tomorrow I'll be seeing some improvement as I get the hang of it.

- Why?

Retrospective (7/19/2016)

Patch #190 Mountains or Beach?

Original Post

I had such a deep sense of ennui, feeling incapable of doing anything after learning of the latest shootings in Louisiana, Minnesota and Dallas. And those were just the ones that made the news. I fear it will all get worse before it gets better.

My back hurt ... the hot water heater died ... the bill came in for my new medication ... the Texas heat ticked up another notch ... social media, newspapers, and radio all spewed fear and hatred, finger-pointing and self-righteousness. 

Really, why do anything? So I sat and looked at the wall. On which was Don's first assemblage ...

and felt quiet joy in that.

Then I stood up and got my sorry self in gear ... went to the thrift store ... did the food shopping ... and stitched patches for July 1-3 ...

Because.

- Newcomb College revisited

Retrospective (7/18/2016)

Patch #189 Newcomb Tulip

From:

Original Post

I was tickled when the Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane announced a Newcomb coloring book ...

It arrived at the end of June, but sadly it wasn't quite what I had hoped for. So I went back to the larger tome that we got in May and started paging through, trying to find the perfect piece to work.

What I found instead was a sense of what I most enjoy about Newcomb pottery. Strong vertical elements ...

organic forms in soft blues and greens ...

many accented with a curry gold ...

So I made a tiny sampler patch to tuck into my post for June 30th ...

A more considered take is yet to come.

- Q is for quilt

Retrospective (7/17/2016)

Patch #188 Quilt-work patch

Original Post

This has long been a favorite read-aloud ...

and this is becoming my favorite page ...

A companion patch is pending.

- Almost done with June

Retrospective (7/17/2016)

Patch #187 Holding on

Original Post

Three more patches have been added to the original posts for June 27-29 ...

Just one more to go and I can start on July's patches.

- Another day, another week

Retrospective (7/17/2016)

Patch #186 A new beach towel

Sometimes you find the perfect bit of cloth a bit too late ... but better late than never.

Original Post

I've been composting ideas, so patches are dropping from my hands as quickly as I can stitch them. Today, I finished up the patches for June 20-26 ...

although in truth, I actually made some of the patches at the beach ...

inspired by this shot (taken last year), of beach towels hanging over the railing ...

Today I tackled the Strawberry Moon patch, wanting to somehow replicate my memory of a pale pink moon rising over the sea and then, as the sky darkened, changing from orange to yellow to white, growing larger and larger as it rose ...

Of course, I took a page from the pojagi play book, stitching the layers of blue together by overcasting the seam with the right sides facing out ...

leaving pleasantly visible joins on the front ...

although I chose not to fell the seams ...

the better to minimize the thickness on the back ...

in order to stitch on the rising moon memories ...

Then this happened ...

Inspired by Grace's post about Inktense pencils and Sharon Tomlinson's online tutorial, I decided to try replicating Don's milk-paint-on-driftwood sunrise. Except I had more room at the top of the patch than I intended, so I started to freestyle and ended up surprising myself ...

quite pleasantly, I might add.

- Line 'em up

Retrospective (7/8/2016)

Patch #185 Painted bunting

I almost didn't include these pictures because they're hard to make out through the window, but the first is a painted bunting leaning down to take a drink on the edge of the bird bath ...

after which he sits up to show his red breast ...

Original Post

Today I got to stitch together a week's worth of patches (June 13-19) ...

And while my "Retrospective" process of posting patches on the day they commemorate as well as the day they are actually made may be confusing, it works for me. 

Did I really just write that? Oh heck, just click "Retrospective" in the Index to see what I mean (there are 50+ and counting).

In any case, my first patch today was a take on the Shark Attack, which is the Outer Banks version of the Shirley Temple cocktail. Just take one rubber shark, fill with grenadine, then pour into lemonade (see the June 17 post for action shots) ...

I thought this appliqué would be a cinch after yesterday's fiddle-y creek map, but it turned out that the fine cotton cloth and long smooth lines were challenging. I ended up outlining the edges in Jude Hill's split backstitch, which restored a semblance of smooth line-ness.

Next up was my birthday patch, which I originally envisioned as a take on the "Food is love" t-shirts Don got for the whole family. But as I cruised through the pictures on my phone, I came to this one taken on June 18 as we drove the last few miles to the beach house ...

I had taken the picture as James Taylor sang Line 'em up on our mix CD, imagining the poles as ever so many candles. Not that I was fixated on my 60th birthday. Ha!

Anyway, with thoughts of bojagi/pojagi playing in my head, I stitched some blue and green linen together and then did a felled seam in the middle. Sadly, it's hard to see on the back due to all the subsequent stitching ...

but once I learn a technique, I do have a tendency to look for opportunities to use it (and if you have a hammer in your hand, everything looks like a nail, right?)

And when you're turning over a decade, everything looks like a candle ...

One last thought (well, two actually).  As I looked at the birthday patch finally stitched to its neighboring patches, my mind went punny on me.  First, how the patch had ended up between a shark and a heart place ...  

and second, that I loved how the rubber (shark) met the road.