A Fling Flys

"Stories In the Garden With Monkey Teeth" will be on it's way to a new home tomorrow. I took some time this morning to sign it.


"Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in"

 Handwork,that is. Piecing and appliqueing simple, hand-dyed cotton muslin.

It doesn't get any more simple or satisfying and I'm paying close attention.

Deranged

Why do we do what we do?
I guess the title says it all today.
Back to the wish factory.

deranged

It would have been a good idea to take a better picture of this once I had finished stitching on it rather obsessively (and quite pointlessly) for over a week before I took the scissors to it at work last night.

There were a lot of elements that I really liked, that worked nicely on their own but just didn't add up to anything all told.

So I chopped it into about a dozen pieces, batting backing and all, and spent several hours shuffling things around only to find I had forgotten to bring along my pincushion

Here it is hasty  basted together in what I hope will be a more successful composition. try to hand stitch this mess back together will be too frustrating so I'm going to wake the Janome up from it's hibernation (more like neglect) and see what comes of it.

more macro

I took my camera to the office with me to continue learning it's capabilities and limits.

This is no a distant field - it's one of the moss gardens from about 3" away.

Below is an accident taken while driving.

cloth resurrection

You know you're in trouble when there's no way you can cut into the cloth you just finished making.

Backyards #1

It was "sit & stare" time last night which I have come to recognize as the STOP sign this hand stitcher.

I'll need to find something to back it, protect the exposed batting and stitching, but it's done and I'm most pleased that it's prompting a series for me at a time when I've been coming up empty.

private stash

I tried duplicating the effect of the cloth I used for the body of the trees using bleach to discharge some of the overdyes I did this weekend.

Several pieces are going straight into my private stash for future development.



Gravitating to the fine textured sacking - flour sacks probably - I find myself planning out more dreamscapes along these lines.

My old Canon A95 came back from the factory ostensibly repaired at no charge.

I say ostensibly because it came back without the honkin' huge old style memory card that I swore I left inside it. I thought they needed to see some messed up pictures to diagnose and fix the problem.

My problem is now I have no memory of removing the card and stowing it "someplace safe" ...kinda like those diamond earrings I once had (sniff). These memory lapses are nothing new for me so I'm not alarmed. Just aggravated. It'll turn up somewhere unlikely but perfectly obvious to the devious mind. It's a backup camera now so it can wait.

PS. After looking in all the likely places and quite a few unlikely ones and finding nothing, I called Canon and said "What's up with sending my camera back brainless?" They were so nice, kind and generous and will be sending me a suitable card.post haste. Squeaky wheel got greased.

more studio archaeology

My very own Rothko which grabs you by the throat the  moment you walk in the room.


"Blood Orange & Lime Martini" 2004
  47" X 29"
Hand dyed muslin and vintage percale cottons over cotton batting, machine quilted to hand dyed cotton canvas.

The green cloth came from sheets that my Aunt Jo had custom made for her vacation lodge in Flint, MI possibly in the 1940s or 50's.

more info and details

sack cloth magic

I'm please and proud to find that Jude will be building a magic cloth starting with  a piece of vintage cotton sacking that I dyed last summer.

This piece was part of this batch of cloth,  gifted me by my friend Rosemary just about a year ago. I left this image large so you can zoom in an see the various textures.

Some of the pieces in this batch had a stencil reading   "Made For A.D.Pierce, Brooklyn, Conn." A little research told me that this company was a hatchery of some sort last mentioned or annotated in the 1930s.

I love a cloth with history, no matter how prosaic.
There will be just a few more pieces of this cloth posted to the Random Acts of Dyeness page. Hoarding most of it for myself.

Macro

Learning the macro settings on the new camera. No shortage of willing subjects lounging about.

Which one of my internet friends collects these carved wood stamps? I bought this one at a flea market years ago and have never done anything constructive with it.

the pleasures of the weekend

I'm taking my time with this one enjoying every stitch. Building the threads by using 3, 4 and 6 strands of machine thread, sometimes splitting up floss and mixing in rayon and metallic. A tiny but satisfying palette.


I have some sheers that might come into play down the line too.




Meanwhile the real pool is draining after a long hard winter. We beat the frog sexcapade this year by about two weeks so no polliwogs in peril.

The boys are going to muck it out when the water is all gone. Jim will pressure wash it and the fill - up  will get under way. Order will be restored to my world.


'Sketti & salad tonight with garlic bread made from potato rolls that they were giving away at Publix.