There were many peacocks roaming free at Beacon Hill Park today and this one strolled right up to me and paused, almost as if he expected me to take his photo - smart bird :) I've signed my quilt and sewed on the last two strips of facing. Hopefully I'll get some hand stitching in later tonight.
This photo is a bit blurred, but it shows a bit of one faced edge of 'Expansion or Contraction?'. After re-squaring my quilt on the dining room table, I cut strips for facing it and sewed the long sides on, as well as hand stitched them down. The velvet is thick and takes more effort to steam in place and I had to resew one area where the facing slipped against it. I also made a sleeve ready to sew on. Almost there, now!
I've couched the metallic yarn onto my quilt now, using a free motion zig zag stitch and invisable thread in a spiral. With the velvets and layers, the quilt is heavy and quite unwieldy to work with and coupled with maneuvering the yarn as I stitched, it's not surprising that the spirals are uneven. I feel a bit in over my head with visions of what I'd like to accomplish that are not quite within my technical reach. I found myself wishing for a 'Stitching Fairy Godmother' who would magically appear and show me how to do the quilting/couching so that it came out to my satisfaction. Some of the velvet pieces haven't remained fused and I will attempt to iron them down again, but if that doesn't work I may end up sewing around edges with invisable thread. I notice feeling discouraged and having catastrophic thoughts such as 'I'll NEVER be able to do this - I might as well give up making art quilts'. I also know that I've been here before and have gotten through to the other side, and even though I can't feel it yet, I imagine I will this time, too. Forging new territory takes courage and is challenging - and the payoff is growth. This realization is right in keeping with the name that I've chosen for this quilt: 'Expansion or Contraction?'. The choice is mine.
Today while out running errands, I had an urge to go to the dollar store even though it wasn't on my list. I read in a book yesterday that to stop your sewing machine pedal from slipping around, you can put that non-slip kind of rubbery stuff underneath it. I also had been thinking about getting a spray bottle so I can wet fabric prior to painting. Neither of these items was on my mind, but right outside the dollar store were two bins - one filled with spray bottles and the other with rolls of the rubbery stuff. I guess it was meant to be :) On my artist date I found this lovely Czech glass button and a bit of roving, as well as near-fluorescent orange thread. Later, while I was basking in the sun and the view of the completely calm ocean, crows kept flying overhead steadily in small groups where they gathered en masse at Cattle Point. I heard a sudden rush of waves and imagine the crows were waiting for the tide to turn and expose their dinner.
I've got the counter cleared in my studio now - a temporary measure though - as I've stored my fabrics in boxes in several cupboards, and I prefer to have easier access to them for when I'm designing. I also did a quick discharge experiment, cutting two hearts from freezer paper and ironing the surrounding freezer paper to this fabric and painting the cut out inside with a bleach pen and the other with dishwasher soap with bleach. I purchased the bleach pen at a dollar store and it did absolutely nothing. The dishwasher liquid left this lovely pink heart that will form the base of a card.
Here's the brooch I made for a friend a few weeks ago, starting with a wet felted base and adding felt, curly wool, embroidered handstitches and machine stitching. The back is green satin with a pin attached. Earlier today I carried on sorting in the studio for a brief time, and came up with a solution of how and where to store my fabrics which will require another weekend, probably, to put into place. I also popped by to the community art show where my quilt is being shown and I learned that it's been receiving alot of interest - people are stopping to really take a look instead of perusing it briefly and moving on. So that was a pleasant surprise!
I've signed, dated and added a sleeve to 'Follow Your Heart' and it's done! I'm so glad to finish another of the 8 or so art quilts I have on the go in various stages. This one measures about 2 feet square.
I often make combination fabric and paper cards for special occasions like the one above for my son's birthday today. I also returned to 'Follow Your Heart', completing hand stitching the binding, doing stitch in the ditch, and then I noticed the central heart was a bit wrinkled and flat, so I decided to partially remove it and stuff it trapunto style, before re-sewing it back down. It looks so much more 'heart-full' now. I also noticed a few more areas in the quilted hearts that needed redoing - which I did - and I expermented on a sample with tiny multi-coloured heart stitches that my Pfaff can do, as I was considering putting them all along the binding. Somehow that seemed too stylized, so I chose to just do a single small heart which I will try to position above my signature for the dot of the letter 'i'. It probably would have been wise to write my name first and then do the heart dot over the 'i'. I seem to be one of those sewers who must do everything the hard way first!
Today I attended the official opening of the Poet Laureate Legacy Artwork, created by my former husband and friend, Glenn Closson, in honour of the former poet laureate, Carla Funk. Carla's poem 'Hide and Seek' is engraved on the metal ribbons entwined in the branches of the tree sculpture. I felt inspired to see both of these artists recognized, as well as by the presence of a new piece of art in our city. Parts of the various speeches were interesting too - such as that when local poets have given readings at city council meetings, it has changed the tenor of the meeting. Carla said that in writing her poem, she thought of a person walking along the sidewalk and feeling particularly solitary and how she loves the idea of language being able to grab that person out of their lonliness. And that's the power of art - to move us and give us a gift in the doing of that.
