hello from away

hello everyone!  In the interest of getting a tiny bit caught up,  I want to share a bit of good news with you.  I am very temporarily in Toronto, to celebrate the fact of 5 of my small embroideries being in the World of Threads Festival here.  I thought this a good excuse for a train trip across Canada, and then a visit to see my family after the exhibit.  Alas, I am technologically challenged about how to post photos that are on the iPhone onto the ipad, and I can't seem to persuade the iPhone to post thru Blogger, so this is all that is possible now.  MOST OF ALL, I want to invite anyone who might be nearby, to come to this show!  I am thrilled to have been included and so much look forward to seeing  all the works and meeting my fellow artists!

www.worldofthreadsfestival.com

It opens tomorrow and continues through November 27, 2016

(Because of running out of words for a while, I have been posting on Instagram, which is a little easier.  My address is @emilysuzanna  ).  I hope to do more catching-up soon). ❤️, s.

Return

Hello everyone,

Many days and even two moons have gone by since last I wrote. Almost every day I have thought today is the day to write and then that day went by, but suddenly today arrived. So I will fill you in a bit. Two lovely train trips, one to New Jersey and one, for Christmas, to Ohio, where I gave the completed quilt to my eldest grandson! Voila!

Thank you to Jude, and everyone in this community who gave me ideas and encouragement for proceeding in a not completely conventional manner. Although I've been silent, in terms of my blog, for a while, my gratitude to each of you is huge and profound.

I have been plugging away! Examples:

The Christmas donkey...

Here is a creature I made at the Columbus, Ohio art museum, which has a wonderful program for Making. Interactive family making...providing materials for creation to happen. Lots of young people encouraging folks to Make Things!

This is a barn swallow embroidered on a tee shirt for my daughter-in-law.  Not quite finished. 

One thing I love about posting these pictures is the chance to see them more objectively.  I see all the imperfections, but mostly I am glad there is a place to share.

There have been many challenges, on a daily basis. This is good, for how else to grow?  

Favorite photo from latest train trip. When the snow melts, the tracks remain...at least in this case. 

That's all for now. Love to each of you!~~s.

A very short report

Hello everyone. Perhaps, I was thinking, my blogging procrastination was due to feeling I had to have lots to show. So today, just one picture... The owl in progress!

Happy first week in August to you. xo, s. 

Moving through reality.

Here is Agnes deciding to go home with me rather than with the group of less shaggy dogs who are more or less in her size range.   Since this picture was taken some of her hair was shaved off to help with a skin problem.  She asked me not to include a picture of that.

This is a small cloth I started when it looked like my beautiful sunflower was not going to last very long, due to the sly, cheeky squirrel.  (I was right.)  But it's been fun working on this...the base is made of silk batting with a layer of gauze on top.  I've been incorporating ideas from Jude's workshops. There's a long way to go still.

This is the sunflower now.  Sigh.  That's Molly the dove in the background.

It's a long story, but before my return to sewing, I spent many years creating images on the computer. They turned into a series that revolved around a horse character, O.P. (Opie)  I used to sell them at Farmers' Markets, but not lately.  SO!  I'm going to try putting some of them in the Mostly Threads Shop. Perhaps the Nurse Series will also become cards.  We'll see how it goes, but here's a picture of the first one, in its cellophane package; it's in the shop.

The Mystery of the Sneaky Harvester

Yesterday, I went out to the farm in the Valley and passed a field of pumpkins, waiting to be picked:

Today, I was working a little on this:

 

and this:

When suddenly I looked up at the apple tree, and saw THIS lying on a branch:

Then, looking over at my beautiful sunflower, my first EVER, I saw this:

Someone has been harvesting my sunflower!  Maybe it was that cheeky squirrel who quarrels with Agnes. Or maybe it was the crow who hides out in the liquidamber tree singing strangely percussive chants.

Whatever it is, I thought I better quick put up a couple of photos of my sunflower whilst it is still partially around.  Here it is as a very very young sunflower blossom:

And here is what is thankfully still there:

Happy October dear readers.

Three creatures

The highlight of this week was a trip to the Honkey Donkey Farm...we saw many many miniature donkeys...they are very sweet creatures, healthy and quite affectionate.  Although they are small, they bray like a big donkey, and that is probably the main reason it wouldn't be wise for me to have one here.  Well, the flies would also be a problem, and it would be better to have two, so they wouldn't get lonesome.  So, it doesn't look like any mini-donks are going to be living here, but here's a photo anyway, thanks to my friend Susan, who invited me on this wonderful outing and took the picture:

And here is a baby spotted mini-donk:

I'll bet you knew this was coming...here is the Spotted Pony...he is floating down the Nile:

(not finished yet, but coming along)

Update on the Nurses

Here is Nurse #1.  She's almost done...just needs something around the edges.

And here is Off Duty Nurse.  She's been having a good time and just needs a little more stitching and a cover-up for the back.  There's another Nurse in the works...maybe two, and I'll do a new posting really soon, I think. 

I've been experimenting with the font size, wanting it to be easy to read...so far there haven't been any complaints, but I'd welcome feedback...

Enjoy these last few days of summer everyone...:)

Bee News!

On page 29 of Quilting Arts Magazine, (August/September) in a wonderful article by Jude Hill, called "Weaving a Cloth Base", my tiny embroidered bee makes an appearance!   I feel very honored, grateful and delighted.  I'm a great admirer of Jude's work and have been studying her techniques in her online classes; she has a unique and warm vision, and was so kind and encouraging to each one of us.  Words are inadequate...

Pink Ladies and the off duty nurse

My garden is having one of its colorful phases and here is a small bit of it.  These ladies need very little water...they are blooming  in unwatered areas everywhere  right now.  They seem to come out of nowhere but actually they have lush green leaves in the spring...you can see the residue of the leaves underneath (the stringy white things).  I like to leave it there as a historical reminder.  Last year there were only four or five ladies in this spot but now they have formed quite a congregation.

And here is the progress report on the Off Duty Nurse...she is not complete yet, but she's getting there, wherever that will be.  Jude's class will end on Sunday, sigh...it has been the best.

A Visit

Here is the 10 year anniversary pillow that will arrive in time for my son and daughter-in-law's 11th anniversary.  And hopefully I will arrive there just about the same time.  The design was for their wedding.  Now there are 2 boys in the household also. I can hardly wait to see them all.  I'm taking lots of cloths to work on en route. Today is the 4th of July; I hear the fireworks, but am staying home.

Gifts

Yesterday I finished this very small hanging for a friend.  There is a little bit of fabric weaving in the center...the border is strips from my grandmother's shawl and the hanger is made from braided bits of the same shawl.  The body of it is made from silk batting.  See the bee?

Saturday was an amazing day.  I went to the quilters' drop-in and on the way passed a little garage sale where I found this rug.  It's about 6 feet long.  Evidently a family member brought it back from Turkey, but the people decided not to keep it because of a few holes and so they were selling it for $10.  I asked them if they were totally sure of that price and they were, so I am very grateful.  Doesn't that look like a lighthouse on the top?

Then, on the way home, I bought this silk hanky in an antique store. After I finish admiring it, I may chop it up for inclusion in another cloth.

I've also started making cloth in Jude's workshop and I'll put up pictures of my experiments soon.  She is a wonderful teacher; the techniques and the results are very satisfying.

Spotted Pony and new cloth

This is a cloth (slightly over 12" square) inspired on my train trip home last summer.  It was early morning, the crescent moon hung in the sky and we were moving through Wyoming or Utah.  I imagined the horses out there chasing the train, or just running to celebrate the new day.

A detail of his happy feet.

Here is the beginning of my new cloth.  It is going to be about home.  Since most of what I do here is work, it seemed fitting to use my old blue jeans (which in the other sense, no longer fit.)  It is stretch fabric and doesn't like being squared up, so I decided to just let it relax and be that way.  The bottom half I paper-pieced and it does look nice and even, but the seams were so thick I thought maybe helter-skelter would create less bulk, so that's what I did on the top. This cloth or quilt is probably going to represent my view of the reality of my home as well as dreams.  Right now it's sort of a footprint.

Some progress

After several attempts, I have finally added my header picture...that is the running horse above.  Perhaps there is a way to have the title letters below the picture, but so far that process eludes me.

That little cloth is about 5" high by 9.5" long. Today I embroidered the bee on.  The almond growers in the Central Valley of California are having difficulties with bees too ill to pollinate, so this little bee is a prayer for help for our bee colonies.  


The orangey-pink fabric in the background is a linen that I dyed with onion skins from Trader Joe's.  It was a bag of multi-colored pearl onions.  I read about the process and that citric acid would help to set the color, but I didn't have citric acid, so I added the peel from a clementine and boiled it all together.  It made a beautiful color, but this is not a sturdy cloth, even though I stitched everything securely.   I felt commited  and went ahead with the project anyway but I doubt it would withstand a trip through the washing machine.  Also, I painted starch on the horse so that I could applique him more easily to the background; this helped. After the initial applique, but before the couching, I soaked the background plus horse in warm water to take out the starch because I read that silverfish like starch.  As you can see this is all very experimental.

Lastly, here is Agnes, my dog who is the size of a large cat.  She is a little skeptical about all this experimenting but is supportive for the most part.

Donkeys and Crows finished

Here is the final (I think) version of the donkeys and the crows.  It's 6.5" x 16"... an experiment that kept evolving.

This is a detail of (last month's) blue moon.  It is made of leftover fringe scraps that I compressed and then sewed in with silvery thread.  Now I am wondering what the donkeys and crows are saying to one another, so I will address that soon.  Meanwhile I'm hoping to make a header for this blog, but no promises as to when it may appear, that is to say, how long it takes to figure out how to do it.

Donkeys and Winter Bird

Here's a close-up on how the donkeys are coming along.  I gave them a little ground to stand on.

And here is another bookmark.  I used linen for the background.  This little bird I made using a stabilizing fabric backer because it's silk and was slippy sliding around something terrific.  Next time I'm going to experiment with starch and see if that will help with tucked-under applique.  Maybe it would be a good idea to work on a bigger scale!

The photo doesn't pick up the shiny thread moon that the winter bird is looking at.

And here is one more, an experiment, a sampler of all these new (to me) ways of working.  It is maybe Santa wading through the January lull. 

Donkeys and Crows plus

This is a work in progress.  The farm I love to visit has donkeys.  One day during Christmas I stepped outside thinking I heard the donkeys braying, but it was a big flock of crows.  They both have nice raspy voices, and it was the time of the blue moon, so I've been thinking about all that.  Then today, because of a post on spiritcloth.typepad.com (January Thaw) I realized there are 2 ancient dresses far back in the closet that I believe were my grandmother's.  We called her Ninawr.  They are stained and not really wearable so perhaps I will put them to use as elements to enhance these cloth pictures, as I used fragments of her shawl in the frog bookmark.  Here is what they look like right now. I am showing them like this because I don't want to think of them as dresses or it will be too hard to borrow from them.

 

Earnest the dove

This is a small wall hanging from 2 years ago called "Earnest and the Peony".  I printed it onto silk from a photo and then embroidered etc.  Earnest was given to me by my neighbors who moved away.  He has a son named Edgar who has to be in a separate aviary because they fight horribly if housed together.  Yet they sit on neighboring perches and serenade each other all day long.