- A lot to remember

Retrospective (7/24/2016)

Patch #199 Quail

There's lot of room for growth, but I'm happy to document where I am in the journey.

Original Post 

A new trio of patches for July 4-6 fell from my fingers today ...

And, as you can see, Don has been working with much the same palette in his latest assemblage ...

I'm finally comfortable with the process that has evolved of blogging every day, sometimes with a patch, sometimes not. When I get around to working on patches for the days I've skipped, the blog posts trigger the ideas that end up in stitch.  

It was the beach towels that I blogged about on July 4th that got re-imagined with my latest thrift store linen find ...

Then the safety pin on the July 5th post caught my eye. I sketched one, but it turned out to be a bit too big. Rather than try to redraw it, I reduced the image to 75% on my copier, pricked the outline, and marked it into cloth ...

I've learned that I trust my eye more with needle than with pen in hand, so I just followed the general direction of the dots using Jude's split backstitch, finessing the single strand of floss as needed ...

My last patch for the day involved the picture-book quilt in the July 6th post. When I brought it up on my iPhone, it occurred to me that I could enlarge the picture to fit a 1 3/4" patch and lay it on my copier to get a perfect-sized image to work from ...

Then I once again pricked holes in photocopied image ...

and used water-erasable marker to convey the design to cloth ...

A bit of practice with two-strands of floss convinced me that the marker dots were too hard to follow, so I sketched in blocks with my XS Pitt pen ...

with a very satisfactory end-result.

And just so I have something to work with for today's patch (whenever I get around to it), I took a picture of our first-ever pair of quail, spotted by Don just as we were sitting down to lunch ...

If you squint, you can just make out the male sitting on a rock directly above the airplane on the left (and no, Don didn't make the mobile, though I'm sure he could) ...

The quail are well worth remembering, but I'm not yet sure if this is how it will go ...

I'll let you know what I come up with ... eventually.

- The jury's still out

Retrospective (7/24/2016)

Patch #198 Weather wise

I guess the new patches are here to stay.

Original Post

I'm reserving judgment on the newest weather patches made from the thrifted linen dress I bought last week ...

They're the Sunday, Tuesday, and Saturday patches in the last row, meant to depict overcast mornings followed by blazing hot Texas afternoons. I may keep them ... I may not. We'll see.

Meantime, I indulged myself in a look at my current works in progress ... which are all too long to show in their entirety, so they've been strategically draped and folded ...

Clockwise from the upper left:

   - Unnamed (2016 weather patches)

   - Georgia's Window

   - Land of Flood and Drought (2015)

   - Remember 2016

And I'm thinking I need a design wall ...

- Backlit

Retrospective (7/18/2016)

Patch #197 Georgia's Window Scraps II

Original Post

How Georgia's Window will look once it's hemmed and hung ...

and another look at the original ...

- Learning as I go (it's all about process)

Retrospective (7/20/2016) 

Patch #196 A patch of blue sky

An early piece of embroidery from the 1960s, when I was on the first of many learning curves.

Original Post

Georgia's Window is coming together slowly, but surely ...

The sash bars of the window surrounding each pane proved to be the biggest challenge, requiring front seams to be sewn on both sides of a very narrow strip of maroon linen ...

created by overcast stitching each seam (14-18 stitches per inch) with the front sides facing out ...

After which the inside edges are trimmed ...

leaving the lower-most edge twice the width of the other three interior edges ...

Finger-pressing the top two interior edges downward first ...

the wider of the lower interior edges is then folded over the narrower edge ...

so the sandwiched lower edges can be folded over the top edges ...

pinned in place ...

and stitched over the upper edges (which I believe to be akin to French or felled seaming) ...

All that so that the front can continue to look exactly the same as it did before ..

while the back goes from looking like this ...

to a much tidier finish ....

This reimagining of Georgia O'Keeffe's painting Door through Window (1956) was influenced by looking at pictures and videos about Pojagi, a form of two-sided quilting used to make wrapping cloths in Korea. Any wonkiness introduced by my idiosyncratic methodology leads me to categorize this as "Pojagi-influenced" in my blog index (with an additional entry for "Bojagi" as there are those who use an alternate spelling).

- Grandparenting 101 (things to do)

Retrospective (7/18/2016)

Patch #195 Amy's Ice Cream

Original Post

Go out for ice cream (but not too often, or it's not special) ...

Make something (homemade strawberry jam, anyone?) ...

and play outside (tennis being the latest of many sports) ...

There's also FaceTime with cousins (in St Louis), make a ramp (out of blocks), go swimming (at the neighborhood pool), help Nana (unload dishwasher, put away clothes, pick up toys), make lunch with Pop Pop (PBJ on tortillas), read books (from the library), play cards (war, go fish), and take a nap (not limited to those under the age of five).

- B-day

Patch #194 was made in honor of Bridget's birthday ...

B is my best friend's daughter, born 4 1/2 months before my daughter Meg (no coincidence). They have been life-long friends, along with our younger daughter Meliss. All three have stood together as each was wed ... and all three have become moms, reminding Barb and me of our younger selves. 

I knew I wanted to make a special patch for Bridget, but it came with a little extra pressure as she is an extremely talented artist and gainfully employed graphic designer (gulp).

So I dialed my memory back to her childhood birthdays, which were grand extravaganzas of kid-friendly fun planned down to the last detail by Barb (who is pictured in the recently-posted Urbanna Creek abode).

And always there was crab picking for kids and parents alike. Dozens of Chesapeake Bay blue claw crabs (jimmies of course), liberally dosed with Old Bay seasoning and accompanied by vats of melted butter and tubs of cold beer.  

There was, therefore, no question about the color scheme for this patch: crab claw blue, steamed shell red, and Old Bay orange.

All that remained was the design, which I kept simple. What else but the Zodiac symbol for Bridget's birthday: Cancer, The Crab.

- 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.