Anticipation

Don't you just love the anticipation of beginning a new piece of work? 

Laying out possible fabrics, threads and embellishments (which gives me the thrill of going through my stash boxes) -- deciding whether I need more thread (of course, I always do) -- determining whether to tea stain some of the fabric -- wondering what other techniques I can use to bring this piece to life - this is the pleasant anticipation I create before actually taking those first stitches.

"So you see imagination needs noodling -- long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering." - Brenda Ueland

Of Needle and Thread

The other day I was asked 'what do you do' - in relationship to craft/art.  The description listing all of the needlework types I have been involved with over the years would take forever -- it's quite a long list.

My 'handwork' began with my husband's grandmother teaching me embroidery.  While I was pregnant she bought me little flannel gowns from Woolworth's and I embroidered their printed designs.  My next step into needlework came many years later when I worked in needlepoint.  Still I worked from a printed pattern.  From needlepoint I went on to counted cross-stitch. 

After cross-stitch I began making cloth dolls.  Finally I was making my own designs and patterns.  I soon became surrounded by dolls - paper, fabric, painted and stitched. 

One day I discovered "Somerset Studio" and then "Cloth Paper Scissors" and my stitching life took a tremendous turn.  No more carefully constructed patterns and lots of improvisation as I spent five years creating book art.  Mixed media became my mantra but still there was plenty of stitching both by hand and by machine.

From book art I moved on to beading.  I couldn't string jewelry I had to stitch it - and so beaded embroidery became my 'new best friend'.

These days I feel the tug toward using more fabric and embellishments, the need to put more of 'myself' into a piece rather than regulated loops.  We'll see where this journey goes -- but I know quite well that I will always be holding needle and thread in one form or another.

"A line will take us hours maybe; yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unstitching has been naught." - William Butler Yeats

Punched Pendants

What a fun time I've been having!  Making these punched pundants involves choosing threads; choosing charms or center pieces; punching the design; adding the trim; placing the punched piece into the metal frame; adding ribbon.  Sort of like following a favorite recipe.

I've loved choosing the colors.  I started with the ribbons and then matched the threads and center piece. 

I am gathering a very nice collection of these simple pendants -- ready to be displayed in public come December.

"Think left and think right and think low and think high.  Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!" - Dr. Seuss

Trapping Threads

I admire those who keep their embroidery floss in an orderly fashion -- all neatly wrapped, labeled and organized by colors, shades and dye lot numbers.  Admiration or not, I have to admit that I am not one of them.

My threads are in glass jars above my work table.  These glass jars are filled to the brim with the various threads which make up my life and my work.  Each jar contains a collection of a color selection.  All purples together, all rose/pink/coral together, all greens together, all browns together, all rusts and golds together, etc.  Its really no way to work efficiently because with each project begun I must get down the jars that will apply to my color scheme and go through each skein of floss.

BUT - that's my joy: sorting, sifting, laying out the various color dye lots.  Laying out the shades in light, dark and in between, touching the threads and comparing them for density and shade.  Deciding what I will need to add to my 'collection'.  Last but not least - filling each jar to the brim with threads that I might or might not use in the future.  Sometimes organization is not necessary at all *smile*.

"Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable". - Mary Oliver

Soft and Warm

These fiber packs arrived recently - colors of gold, grey, purple.  The gold is the color of tobacco leaves, a deep, warm tea, or perhaps an old, expensive brandy.  The grey is the color of fog, mist, a soft cat, a favorite warm sweater.  The purple is the color of mountains in the distance, a royal cape all draped and rich, an iris blooming in the garden.

I love both the way the grey softens the purple, the way the deep gold warms the grey. Today I'm  busy creating a 'light and shadows' heart with these threads and feeling both their warmth and their richness as I punch and stitch.  

"Such lovely warmth of thought and delicacy of colour are beyond all praise, and equally beyond all thanks!" - Marie Corelli

"Strata"

Strata: Layer of material, formed either naturally or artificially, often one of a number of parallel layers placed one upon another.

As winter settled in I found myself longing for warmth - even the appearance of warmth was good enough.  And so this punchneedle piece came to life.  These warm colors layered one after another made me think of desert canyons and of the layers of rock on which this world is built.

Thread change after thread change defined this design.  Punchneedle uses its own unique needle which requires two steps for each thread change.  Once you add in the process of pulling yards of each color, blending colors and changing colors, the process of punching itself pales next to the constant thread changes.  It was a very good learning experience and you might be able to see the more frequent changes and my growing abilities to blend threads as you go from the top of the piece (where I started) to the bottom.

My goal for this year is one doll figure a month, one folk art punchneedle bird a month and one punchneedle picture a month.  So far I'm behind by only one picture so I guess I'd better get busy and draw up the next design and start choosing colors.

"And Life is Colour and Warmth and Light and a striving evermore for these..." - Julian Grenfell

Little Fuzzies

Don't you think that even the most lowly thing can make it into our art?   Sometimes, even if I don't have a plan for something I keep it around, thinking 'who knows?'  So it is with these 'fuzzies' that have come off of the fat quarters after they've been thrown into the washing machine.  For my work, I guess I don't really have to wash the fat quarters - but I so love to feel that 'after the wash' soft fabric beneath my hands and then too, if I didn't wash the fabric where ever would I find these pieces of thread all twisted and tangled and matted. 

I store them in a jar and periodically I'll pull out a batch, wad it up and attach it to something.  What can I do with these cast offs?  I can scrunch some together and stitch them to the toes of an art doll or find a place for them in the middle of a stitchery.  I can finagle them together in a way that will create a head of hair for an art doll.  Or, I can just handle them (they are so soft) and admire the colors that have blended together in this mess of threads.

Sometimes - in fact quite often for me - its the little things that make me happy.

"Success in life is founded upon attention to the small things rather than to the large things; to the every day things nearest to us rather than to the things that are remote and uncommon". - Booker T. Washington