Always Something

I've been operating with lists all week, as I've deadlines to meet and weather to work around.

• Monday's deadline was to deliver "My Little Choia Garden" to the curator of its exhibit. CHECK!
• Yesterday I wanted to finish the top of P's "Hunter's Star" throw and mark it for quilting.  CHECK!

Today I wanted to sandwich the quilt and start the quilting.  HALF-check --  if such a thing is possible.  I ran into a snag -- or two.

Hunter's Star throw with narrow border, sandwiched for quilting

The quilting marks disappeared!  I'd run into this problem when marking the circles on "MLCG", but they were small, so I took to marking them as I went along so that the embroidery could be put in the right place.  The circles were batik fabric, so I thought perhaps that had something to do with it.

Wrong.

It's the marker -- Tailorform Vanishing Fabric Marker, to be exact.  It's supposed to disappear in 48 hours...but it seems to work too well, for it vanished almost completely between 5 p.m. yesterday and 9 a.m. today.  I'd even folded the top with the marked side in, thinking that would keep the air from getting at it and removing the marks.  Go figure.

The quilt is sandwiched anyway...and I may mark it in sections as I quilt.  The purple line made by this marker is perfect for the fabric, as it's easy to see.  However, while in town tomorrow, I'll check other options.  (I have a turquoise water-erasable marker, but it's not dark enough for this particular project.  I also have a marking pencil which might do but the lead is so soft it's constantly breaking, which is why I no longer use it.)

And the other small snag?  I have a small spool of thread that would work for quilting the top, but I'm concerned it's not enough.  So...along with marker I'll be replenishing thread!

The upside of today is that given the aforementioned wrinkles in my plans, I had to move on to other items on my list.  This included taking out the garbage and cleaning my gutters and downspouts before the forecast rain hit (again).  CHECK!

It also included casting on the Seyfert cowl from Berroco (a free pattern), which I'm making in the yarn for which it was designed (whoa!) -- Berroco "Quasar" -- as a gift for my cousin A when I visit later this month. She's cousin D's wife, and her favourite colour is blue so here's what I'm using:

Pretty, eh?  I think it'll be a nice addition to her cool-weather wardrobe.  Next on the list: graft the toes in cousin D's 'Plain Vanilla' socks and sew in the ends, while watching to see if the Severe Thunderstorm Warning actually produces a Severe Thunderstorm.

Oh...and check in with WIP Wednesday over on The Needle and Thread Network, to see what's cookin'!

Finishing so I Can Start

This week is about finishing.

"Back to the Garden" is faced and has its label and sleeve.

P's "Hunter's Star" is just about finished.  Today it gets its border and maybe its quilt design; by the end of the day tomorrow it will be sandwiched and basted.

In the photo at left there are 6 blocks across and 8 down.  However, as of last evening, there are 7 blocks across and 8 down.  Each block is 6" finished, so that's 42" wide by 48" long.  However, there will be a narrow border -- 1 1/2" finished -- all the way 'round, in the blue print fabric, and binding to match, bringing the finished size to 45" wide by 51" long.

Deadline: June 22, when I fly to Montreal!

And yesterday I delivered "My Little Choia Garden" to Patti Morris, the SAQA Western Canada Co-Rep for Alberta, who's curating our next travelling exhibit, The Burgess Shale Project.  This is a show of a different sort!  Instead of quilt shows and galleries -- at least initially -- this two-dozen-piece exhibit will be travelling throughout Alberta elementary schools, fusing art and science, to teach kids about the Burgess Shale Fossils -- with colourful textile interpretations.

I hinted at this piece while it was under construction, but now I feel I can share it.  The pieces are gathering at Patti's home in Red Deer, soon to be picked up the by the curator from the TREX program, which is hosting the province-wide school tour. TREX is run by the Alberta Foundation for the Arts; we linked into it through one of our PAM members, Barbara J. West, A.S.A.  There will be cards and a book published as part of the project -- and the exhibit should be travelling for at least two years.  It's our fond hope that other parts of the SAQA Western Canada Region will then be able to tap into it and move it through schools in B.C., Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Here's the full view of my piece, which at the required 24" square, is on the large side for me:

My Little Choia Garden (C) 2013

And here's my accompanying Artist's Statement:

"Even shown in dull greys and browns on the RoyalOntario Museum website, the pre-historic sponges, Choia carteri, struck me as cute little critters.  At the very most, these sponges were no more than three inches (7.62 cm.) across.  To me, they look like little umbrellas, with their radiating spines made of spicules that they used for absorbing food from their watery environment, as they hovered over the ocean floor.  I thought I’d show a garden of them, large and small, nestled on the sand at the feet of a visitor to the pre-historic ‘sea-side’.  That inspired me to write this bit of doggerel for my Artist’s Statement:

My Little Choia Garden

If I could sail the Cambrian Sea

In a flat glass-bottomed boat,

What creatures therein would I see

Below the waves afloat?

Choia hover on the sand

‘Round monsters of the deep,

Sifting water through their spines

Although they look asleep.

If in a Cambrian tidal pool

I dipped my toes (Beg pardon!)

Then perhaps I’d ‘range the Choia ‘round

To make a pretty garden.

Materials: commercial cotton and batik fabric, cotton thread, polyester thread, recycled woven blanket of unknown origin, DMC © #5-wt perle cotton, poly-cotton batting.

Techniques: rough-edge appliqué, machine quilting, hand embroidery.

Dimensions: 24” x 24”

Inspirational Sources:

·         Wonderful Life, Stephen Jay Gould, 1989;

·         Royal Ontario Museum website re: Choia Carteri: http://burgess-shale.rom.on.ca/en/fossil-gallery/view-species.php?id=39&ref=i&

·         “Octopus’s Garden” – Richard Starkey (Ringo Starr), 1969 – recorded by The Beatles on their album, Abbey Road"

Once I know where the exhibit will be showing, I'll post the information in case anyone is nearby and wants to check it out.  I've seen the other pieces Patti's collected so far and can safely say this show will be unlike any other!

As for Starting...Self-directed Summer School resumes shortly...with dye, paint and ink studies first on the schedule.  Stay tuned!

Yet Another Day

spent outside the studio.  Errands in Red Deer and Lacombe...winter tires exchanged for summer ones.  Groceries.  Celebrant at Evensong in lieu of our priest who is on holiday.  Brief kaffeeklatsch with my friend, A, during which there was reciprocal show and tell.  Her latest hand-quilted applique quilt -- combination of applique and broderie perse is exquisite!

Now home to catch up at The Desk and move into the studio for some piecing of P's quilt (the Hunter's Star) during this evening's Quilt Cam.

Meanwhile, for your viewing pleasure, I have to thank my cyber-friend Pat of Altering Thoughts for sharing the wonderful work of Hilde Morin.  Enjoy!

The Pressure's Off

I've had to put "Waiting for the Train" away for a bit; I ran out of ribbon!  An order has been placed for two 50-metre spools, which won't arrive for at least a week and by then I'll be finishing up the Show and packing  in earnest for Santa Fe.  Ah, well.  A project for May.  :-)

When I left off last evening, "Waiting" looked like this:

I admit I'm not entirely happy with it.  The light tan 'rushes' are too heavy; there's not enough variety of weight and texture.  I'm considering taking some of this out and interspersing it with crewel wool from my stash.  And more grass has to be put near the water's edge -- and not by thread-painting, which is too fine.  So.  Just as well I can leave it; I have plenty to go in the show.

Instead I've spent this April Snow Day embroidering evergreens on the Atlantic Seaboard Sampler, and assembling another batch of 6.5" blocks for P's "Hunter's Star".  I now takes up my entire design wall -- and there's quite a number of blocks to make yet:

While sewing I was entertained by these unfamiliar black-and-white birds at the feeder in the tree right outside my sewing room window:

Though it may look like the sun is shining in that photo, it isn't!  It was (and is) still snowing, and the sky is white, meaning bright white "snow blind" conditions.  The feeder kept swaying in the wind, but the wee birdie (and two or three of his friends) were persistent and I do believe managed to dig through the snow to get some of the food!  Alas the poor robins are totally confused as they don't eat seed.  They've been making do with berries and sitting forlornly on tree branches wondering where the bugs are...

I tried to get more shots of them but they were moving too fast.  Here's the only other one that turned out:

See him in the centre there?  The building in the background is my garage...fronted by heavily-laden junipers.  My neighbour has been shovelling despite the fact it's still coming down steadily, simply because this stuff is pretty heavy and wet.  He has a flat roof (mine is peaked) so he's been up there shovelling it off.

April in Canada, eh?  Pity!

Steady She Goes

It may seem from this post that there's a great deal going on, but it's all been sewdio work, of one sort or another.

Monday I worked on P's birthday quilt, gradually filling my design wall.  I really like how it's shaping up.  With a couple of borders, it'll be throw-sized -- and P's the kind of gal who likes to curl up on her couch with her cat, so that'll be just fine.

Yesterday I started a wee gift for my room-mate-to-be at the SAQA Conference, and today I finished it up. I used a couple of pieces of sun-dyed fabric from last summer's session.  The outer cover is some sort of semi-sheer of indeterminate origin (!) and the flaps inside are some sort of synthetic slippery stuff, also of unknown material.  The lining is a commercial cotton.  Or maybe a poly-cotton.  (I dyed the first two, but not the lining fabric; it was already that colour.)  All of the fabrics were given me a few years back...

The bookmark is some Treenway Silk ribbon from the Judith Montano Series in the "Cedar" colour-way; it's stitched in place and embellished with a bead or two.  Green, of course!

Journal Cover - outside (about 6" by 8", folded)

Journal Cover - inside

Speaking of silk ribbon, my order from Dharma Trading arrived yesterday, so today I took my first plunge into acid dyeing and made these, using my modest collection of Jacquard Acid Dyes.

 It was easier than I thought, but the mixing will take some experimenting.  The instructions on the website and the jar, and in my "Teach Yourself Visually Dyeing" book all assume you're going to produce massive quantities of dyed material.  I went quite small with my measurements -- or so I thought -- but ended up having to both dilute my dye bath and shorten the time the ribbon soaked in it, in order to get a paler product.  I have dye bath left over, however -- in two colours (brown and purple-navy), so will play with combinations of them plus water till I get what I want.


I was aiming for something I could use for dry grasses/cat-tails along the pond in "Waiting for the Train".  On the upper left corner of the card you'll see a small bright orange piece and right next to it, a dark purply-navy.
The first is pure Golden Yellow -- clearly very concentrated!!  The second was created from Golden Yellow, Sky Blue and a touch of Scarlet.  Both were good starting points.

I began with a tiny bit of ribbon and boiling water, dye and vinegar in a glass jar (recommended by a dear friend who used to run her own dye-works).  Then I dug out my dye pot, put all the Golden Yellow mixture into it and began to play.  I added a cup of the purple-navy mixture, and then measured in several cups of hot water, and added some more vinegar.  That produced the deep brown, and the slightly paler red-brown you see on the left side of the card.  Adding more water/vinegar and shortening the time in the bath produced three pieces that are closer to what I'm aiming for -- the last 3 on the card moving from left to right.

All, of course, will be used somewhere or other.  Tomorrow, I may brew up another batch, using the two original colours as my foundation, diluting and adjusting from there.  This is just too much fun to fuss over!

As for "Wonder"...the beading hasn't started yet...but this evening, most likely.

In the Knitting Department, remember the sleeveless turtleneck?  I'm doing the ribbing around the second armhole.  Almost there!

P.S. Linking up with WIP Wednesday over at The Needle and Thread Network.  Wanna join me?

Piece-full Sunday

After a busy week in the sewdio, concentrating on new and ongoing pieces, I often like to take a complete break on the weekend.  This weekend I turned to piecing, as I did when I was working on Easy Street.  My in-progress Block of the Month, "Cinnamon" is one example.  I finally finished that fussy Block #3 that I was worried about, shown here on the top of the triangle with her sisters.

This weekend I started another pieced quilt -- a form of Hunter's Star done in two 'colours', from a pattern in the June 2006 issue of Better Homes & Gardens Creative Collection: American Patchwork & Quilting.  The designer for this piece is Jackie Robinson, and she uses a rotary cut formula to create the star effect.

I'm making this piece for my friend P in Montreal, who's having a Significant Birthday in June (even more significant than my 60th last fall).  I'm making the quilt from stash, and will make it only as large as materials allow, because all of the fabrics in question are long out of print.  Here are the first blocks positioned on my design wall:

I'm using a small-scale tone-on-tone print for one 'colour' and a large print for the other, so that they read as mauve and blue respectively.  There's a glint of silver and a hint of turquoise in the large print, which may figure in the border(s) or binding.  So far, anyway, I'm delighted with it, and hope to have it finished by the time I see P on a trip down East later in her birthday month.

As for the reason I took the break?

"Vespers II" is properly finished and matted now:

And "Waiting for the Train" is partially quilted.  It was fun going 'round the graffiti:

The sun is now high and it's as warm outside as it's going to get today, so I'm off for a walk.  This evening, perhaps a bit more of the Hunter's Star will take shape.  Have a great rest of your Sunday!