Stitch Rabbit

A Steady Constant.

 

It seems to me that there are not often times in my life when things stop, for even a moment. And there are times when I cannot find a room in my house where there is not something perched on a table or shelf or armchair waiting for me to return to.

And I like it that way. Idle hands I have not.

 Frankie's long-awaited quilt will be finished in time for her birthday. I am only a few stitches away from the hand-quilting being finished before I bind it for her seventh year. I can't believe she's about to be another year from the moment I laid eyes on her.

 A growing collection of buckets and pails of dye and yarn and linen and cotton are finding their way to the shop outside, recently emptied and ready to become my garden and dye studio. Scrap and salvaged wood is collecting as well, ready to become the interior walls of the shop. I can't hardly wait to have such a great space for all the mess and glory.

The garden grows and grows, and so do the trays of seedlings in all the windows. Perhaps it's time to build a greenhouse.

It seems that every space available there is something going on. It is spring. It is change, it is growth. It is making and creating. It is doing. It's how I like it.

It is a steady constant, and it is love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh Brilliant Nature.

 

I've finished the top to my first completely plant-dyed cotton quilt project. I've been foraging, saving, cooking and dyeing with plants over the last few months, and the outcomes are a perfect example of the brilliance of nature, the surprising discovery of color, and the satisfying ability to make it yourself in a sustainable way.

 

 

Using walnut husks, ivy, pomegranate, cutch, avocado skins and onion skins I dyed unbleached cotton about a half metre at a time. I used alum and iron as mordants.

The fabric came out beautifully, and I think all the inconsistencies and surprises in the dye give it a really nice texture and depth. I am so amazed by the colors you can pull from a few leaves and skins. All the exhausted plant materials went straight into the compost. Nothing was wasted.

 

 

 

 

 

Collecting

 

Trying and failing. Fallen birch bark hasn't made me soft pinks yet. But hovering underneath trees picking up curled pieces of bark has named me the new weirdo at the park.

 

Some dyes are becoming my old faithfuls. And still they surprise me.

 

Twisting and folding and dipping and dyeing and opening and discovering.

 

Collecting enough to call a quilt or two.

 

The sun warm on my back, the season's first flowers cast shadows in my windows,

and my hands are busy in all of this spring.

The Process.

I was talking with a friend over a beer about the importance of documenting your process. Not only for personal reference, but as part of your public outreach in whatever platform you choose. Whether you blog or instagram or tumblr or facebook your personal hobbies, art and business, I think it's just as important to present your process, your tools, your systems, your space as it is to present your finished work.

 

For me, if I didn't document my process, you wouldn't see very much.

That is because the finished product doesn't come as often as the times you are in your studio or in your shop. The hours that go on behind your own works of art are such a beautiful part of the story. I find it so interesting getting a chance to peek at how other people are spending their precious "work time", when it's something that they do for love.

 

 

Many of my photos are of my materials in use because I find them beautiful on their own. A skein of yarn or a pair of shears, a length of fabric that has been dyed and waiting for possibility.

 

 

It's within that process that you will find people being exactly who they are. I am happy to finally be in the stages of styling a finished product to shoot a photo, but it is actually here, peeking in my studio, in my garden, in my baskets upon baskets of projects, that you will find me, exactly the way I want to be. Never finished, always wanting more.

 

 

Patterns and Color and Taking Breaks

 

I'm trying to get out more, be more social. It's hard for me, when I've got so much going on at home and in the studio that I'm happy and excited about, but I am also recognizing in myself how isolated I can become - even when it's for something I love to do.

 

 

When you have these tiny kids and you are choosing to be at home with them, you are also making this choice that your daily life contains a very tiny group of human beings in comparison to the rest of the world. I remember days when I felt like the only mother alive with two kids and a dirty kitchen and a pile of clothes I never got to wear anymore because the stay-at-home uniform was jeans, gumboots and an apron.

 

 

For me, knitting and sewing came as a need for sanity, a need to be doing something other than hanging diapers on a line and cleaning up sparkle glue. I started to get creative with the small pieces of time I could get to myself and it gave me a huge sense of satisfaction, that I was contributing in some way that felt artistic... it was like I was contributing to myself. 

 

 

And now with kids bigger and busier and more independent.. I find more time to do the things I love, the anticipation of thinking about how I want to do something, or how this might look cool motivates me to get downstairs and work on these things...

 

 

 

And I get lost in it in such a fantastic way. Quilting and dyeing and knitting gives me this stuff to think about, to use my brain and work things out and discover - and LEARN, constantly. Getting busy with materials has saved me from boredom and given me a lot to think about.

 

 

 I'm on this edge of seeing another side to things, finding patterns and colors in different ways and different places than I'd expected to. And that's exciting. But like everything, like someone who works too much or overloads themselves with classes and homework or simply doesn't ever come up for air, I too have to remember to balance my act. Get out. Like out of the backyard and into conversations with people. See my friends and go to shows and do different things. I'm proud of the work that I do, but I need to remind myself to put down the work sometimes, it will be there when I get back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Moving On

Finally, finally, after a few weeks of travel and the busy that keeps us from what we want to do....
I am pinning the quilt for Frankie's bed. I always look forward to bringing the quilt out of my studio and onto my lap in a chair for the final hand stitching. It's such a nice way to end the work, binding the blanket together, underneath it all.

Unfinished Business

There's a lull in the house right now in terms of finished projects. I've really hunkered down to finish off some long overdue knitting, work on Frankie's quilt and do some hand-sewing to repair some clothes. It's that kind of work that can feel tedious in the moment, because I might be looking for some instant gratification, but in the end it pays off because of the hours you put in. I'm looking forward to sharing the end results with you... But it will have to wait, partly because I'm not done, and partly because the day after I vowed to get back to my good camera and put down the IPhone... I dropped the damn thing and now it needs to be repaired. Uh huh. Life's like that.

Her Very First (Doll) Quilt.

She poured through my scrap baskets, searching for the perfect pieces. She pressed, with my help, and marked each piece with a ruler and chalk into a near-perfect square.

She delicately cut each square, trying her very best to stay on the lines.

She sat, with me... and pieced her very first quilt. Deliberating the way it would look, switching blocks until it looked exactly right to her own little eyes. She was beaming.

She pinned each block, muttering "right sides together". This took a really, really long time. I did my best not to let my own hands get in the way.

She sat on my lap, with her hands guiding her fabric while I pressed the pedal beneath us and kept a watchful eye on the needle and the seamstress.

She pressed her very own seams. She's almost done.

Hours had passed and we came up from the studio and into the house and she chatted away with her Dad about her quilt and I listened, smiling. I can't wait to watch her finish her very first quilt.

 

In The Studio Lately.

With the awfully drawn-out Halloween weekend of madness out of the way, I've finally swept the studio floor of the remnents of costume and gotten back to life as it should be. A really nice, steady flow of cowl orders have been coming in and I'm so pleased to have busy hands as the nights get colder.

I've also been busy finishing a sweater that has seriously been on the sticks for almost a year. It was just one of those projects that kept getting pushed back for smaller, faster projects. And then it was summer, and who wants to knit a giant winter cardigan in the middle of July? I'm on the sleeves now. It shouldn't be much longer, right?

Finally I'm fooling around with something the quilters call "improvised quilting". Basically, you cut and sew and hopefully it turns into something beautiful. It's slow and methodical, and perfect for nights in with a glass or four of wine and a lot of music.

You can always tell that winter's coming in this house. We all get back to work on the things we love.

 

Can't Keep A Good Girl Down (Or, I'm Too Stubborn To Sit Around)

Can't sit, can't stand, can't take it lying down. I hurt my back really good the other day, so good in fact, that it required a hunched-over lope to the doctor's and back with a fresh prescription for a lot of dream-inducing pain pills. My range of motion was hunchback only, with muscle spasms that reached from my upper back to my knees. Oi...

I don't take sitting around very well, as you can imagine. I did my best to stay positive. I thought, "Oh good - maybe I will just streamline through these knitted cowl orders and Frankie's entirely-knitted fall wardrobe (poor child) since all I can do is sit on an icepack anyways." I surrounded myself with baskets of knitting, cups of tea and ice. No go. The drugs come with the worst kind of finger dexterity you can imagine. I look like a weird ogre attempting to knit with sticks and rope - or at least that was the picture I imagined in my foggy head.

So after two entire days of half hour increments in various sitting, standing and lying down positions I have read from front to back three novels, one cookbook from which I will probably not cook from, slept for more hours straight than I have since I had children and basically contemplated life, in all it's beauty and what it means to me.

UNTIL...today, when I waddled into the sewing room, unable to straighten out, I realized that I was the most comfortable leaning against my cutting table. And I had this quilt in mind...You can stop your tsk-tsking, my mother has done it already. You don't really expect me to sit around for longer do you? TWO DAYS IS MY LIMIT!

The thought of picking up a rotary cutter was perhaps not one of my brightest ideas, since the long list of "don't do's" on my prescription include driving, lying down for ten minutes after eating and looking after small children (okay, I added the last one, but hey - I can milk this right?) Anyways, the cutting was simple triangles with hardly any math and I did just fine. Happy to be busy, even if it lasted for only an  hour or so before I crashed on the couch to a chorus of "I told you so's".  Can't keep a good girl down.

I have changed the coloring in my photos to a sepia tone to help illustrate the pain pill cloudiness in my head. Artistic, non?

 

Finishing What I Started

Okay, the "Finish Me" baskets of sewing projects are over-flowing and getting out of hand. I sorted through them (yet again) with good intentions, and I even recycled a few projects that I just know I'm never, ever going to finish. The project that was giving me the biggest grief was the paper-pieced rose I made a few months ago.

The paper-pieced rose, I loved...I had good intentions to keep going and hand sew about twelve 20 by 20 inch blocks like it to make a quilt. Sigh.....good intentions, but poor, poor follow through. I have very romantic notions about hand stitching a quilt from start to finish, a project I would labour over for months, rocking in my chair with a lamp light glowing on my work... I don't know if it's that I just don't have to focus or the drive to work on the same project continuously for months and months....but the idea of it makes me really really want to do something else. So I took the one lonely block I'd made and turned it into a pillow. Fail safe quilter's go to project. If it isn't working - make a pillow.

I will make that hand-sewn quilt one day - but for now, I've got two kids growing out of their clothes by the week, an over-grown garden and one really, really cute pillow.

The Bed Leaving Milestone Deserves a Quilt.

I found these amazing twin teak beds online awhile ago, the woman selling them slept in them as a child, and then her children did, and then it was time to give them away - and I managed to snag them! The are amazing, European style with sliding drawers on the side, perfect beds for my two kids.

The beautiful teak beds are sitting patiently in our basement for the summer, until we are ready to move my studio down there and turn our second bedroom into a room for the kids. We've always wanted our kids to share a room, and it's coming up fast. Frankie's in her bed (most) nights and Char Char is sleeping through the night, waking up on his own and practically making us cappuccinos in the morning. Very independent little man. So I guess it's the time. I can't hardly believe it. We've had kids in our bed for five years, and we've loved it. I can't believe they are leaving the bed, the room, all the way down the hall... I better wipe my tears. I better get a head start on some bedding.

Here's what I've been working on this week. Nice and easy, a strip quilt for the boy. If you've never quilted before this is the easiest one to do. I'm talkin' sew some strips together, sandwich, quilt and bind.

 

I think he's gonna be really happy snuggling up in his new quilt.

And I think he'll be ecstatic to be sharing a room with his very big and very cool older sister.

 

Tonight.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is meditation and prayer to me. I am thankful for these nights.

 

Paper Piecing Is So Much Fun.

Eeeee! I'm so happy with how this turned out! I've been working away every night at this rose using the English Paper Piecing method. So much fun. While hand stitching takes a LONG TIME, it's a perfect project to do on those nights when you want to sew, but you don't feel like sitting at your machine. Because you've recently become obsessed with Friday Night Lights. Which is weird, because it's a show about high school football. So hand stitching becomes your friend, your football-watching friend.

I saw something similar to this over at Oh Frannson (who's quilts and color choices are amazing, check out her echino quilt) and thought I'd give it a try. I used some of that great Ruby Star Rising fabric for the middle and stuck to bright Kona solids for the rest. I am going to finish it with a few more pieces to square it off into a 22 by 22" block, and then get started on some more. Eventually I will have enough to make a quilt.

If you want to try something like this it is REALLY not hard. I'll tell you what I did. I wanted the shape of a rose cut into geometrical pieces. I started by using a ruler and a pencil and drawing out the outer lines first. I used a thick sheet of poster board, paper is WAY too flimsy. From there I started connecting corners with my ruler to create shapes within the rose. Once I was happy with the way it looked I numbered the pieces before cutting, going around clockwise from the middle.

Then I cut em, and then I pinned them to a thick piece of white cardboard so that I could work more easily with layout and color decisions.

Once I decided on the fabric I wanted for my middle piece and next piece I placed the two poster board pieces on their coordinating fabrics, right side down. Fabric glue. I cut leaving a seam allowance of about 1/4 inch, but whatever you want to do is fine, as long as you have enough extra fabric on all sides to fold over.

Folding over the joining edges of my two pieces I held them together, right sides facing each other and joined them with a running stitch.

Bingo, first pieces joined together. I did this for a few hours a night while watching American football dramas and before I knew it I had a paper pieced rose and a new-found love for high school jocks and cheerleaders. Go Panthers!!

Now, I know that some of you paper piecing sticklers are yelling at the computer right now saying "Baste your pieces - don't glue them!" And you're right, traditionally, little English grannies did not glue, maybe glue had not even been invented, but I found gluing faster and easier for me which are key words in a modern day sewing mother's language. Nevertheless, here is a great tutorial from Sunshine's Creations on English Paper Piecing, and another great paper piecing tutorial with PDF hexagon downloadables from Snippets and Blabbery. Hexie flowers are adorable and a great introduction to paper piecing!

Like I said, this block was SO much fun to make and I will be making more and more. To recap, for the rose I will urge you to definitely pin your cut pieces onto something so that they stay in order and you have an idea of what colors you want to use for your pieces. I found this essential. If you haven't done paper piecing before, give it a go! Start with a hexagon flower and you'll soon see the possibilities are endless!

 

 

 

In The Works

I'm working on something REALLY FUN right now and I can't wait to show you but not yet - it's not done. I think I'm sensing a turn in my work these days, a fork in the road in taste or design. I'm really excited about where I've been going in my mind, and I can tell you one thing - it's all very colorful!