another long absences brings you a show and tell:

Happy November 5th.  Guy Fawkes day for the Brits among us.
And yes, I've been away again but keeping busy.

Here are a few show and tells of what I've been up to.

My sister sent me a sweater set to embellish.  So far only the "shell" is done:

It's a basic little paper  pieced triangle with some embroidery added.

I also made a needle case.  I've been  admiring the ones that others have done, for example: Deanna at eclectic-meanderings (scroll down a bit),  and so was inspired to try and make one:

This is the cover.  It reads needles pins.

This is how it looked while being assembled.

And the interior for all those tools of the trade.

I also started playing a little with my version of a sampler.  Practicing my stitch work basically.  It has now become one long long sampler fit enough for Dr. Who  (almost.)  I think I started it in anticipation of Karen Ruane's currently running class, Embroider, Embellish, Create. The sampler is growing and going.  It probably about 7 feet long at the moment so I'm showing it to you in two parts:

And I still have all my other WIPs going too...you see I really do stitch while I'm away.

I'd also like to take the time to remind everyone to keep positive thoughts going to all the storm victims out East.  In particular for Jude and her family and neighbors.  The word is that she is doing okay but still thinks it will be another two weeks before the power comes back on.  The days are getting colder and shorter so let's keep hope alive by donating to a relief fund to bring needed aid to the area.

Hopefully I'll be back sooner then later.  Stay safe and warm.  Thank you.

not much to say!

Most completed piece from last week - the piece from Karen Ruane's: Extended Embellishment

This is a piece of scrim that has had FME: free motion embroidery done on it with a sewing machine then wrapped and embellished with embroidery stitches.  The piece isn't actually complete yet but the main section is.  The "framing" and "edge" work still has to be done. 

The other things that I have been working on is causing my fingers to get sore and achy:  English Paper Piecing:

I am basically practicing making little hexies and 9 (1") patch pieces.  I'm hoping to use these as elements on a base cloth (perhaps the one I started - see last post) - using traditional quilt elements but interpreting then in my own way - embellishing and stitching - something in that boro style that is inspired my Jude's work. 

http://spiritcloth.typepad.com/spirit_cloth/

The other thing that I've been doing is hunting and gathering...as the days cool down things start falling from the sky and it's time for me to find shapes and save dates for my winter's inspiration (mood board?) images/imagery.  I still have all my oak leaves from last year in a box.  These will start a new box:

I'm also gathering real material (cloth) for a new class with Karen Ruane that will start in November:
http://karenruane.bigcartel.com/product/embroider-embellish-create-2012

This is real vintage lace gifted to me by my sister.  She got a bag of cuffs and collars a while back from a friend who had removed them from garments from an elder relative that must have passed or was cleaning her closet of old dresses.  Some of them are very fragile and I'm not sure I'll be actually manipulating them but how wonderful it is to hold and have these things (fellow stashers will understand!) 

And speaking of stashes aka our own messes:

 I am quoting here from Karen Ruane's blog post (hope it's okay Karen.) 

 Karen had posted a picture of her work table:
http://karenannruane.typepad.com/karen_ruane/2012/09/unpacking-virtual-boxes.html captioning it, "what's on my table?" and from this grew a flickr group: (karen's quote)
 "Sara has started a new group centred around tables, the stuff we have accumulating on them. As you know my own table is always covered in junk!The group has the potential to grow into a fascinating archive of images and the more contributors the better. To sign up or browse then just go here"

So without further ado I proudly present my table (aka mess):

Cheers  for this week.  Thank you for stopping by. 

wednesdayworkwithwords

Probably better get one more in for April since April is almost going by:

Since my first  April cloth was gifted to my friend Keith for his birthday, April cloth 2 had to be born.  The cloth isn't really as wobbly as it looks in the picture, it just photographed crooked! Following are details of the piece so that you can see some of the stitches.  I left the needle in, by the way, since I'm not quite sure if it is done. I'm leaving a few open, unstitched, spots because I'm trying out some new thoughts.  One of the comments from last time noted that a little mystery was allowed for the viewer to fill in their own story if the piece isn't completed stitched out.  I like that and took note.

The oak leaf is here, in the middle.  the cloth is representing transition...as Winter transcends into Spring. The left side is the colder/wintry side. Curling and swirling, whirling winds come with the change.  A little more spare  in the amount of stitches show a little of the barren feel that the end of Winter might have.  Spring is on the right. Especially with the warmer Spring then usual, the flowers, trees and  fauna have been appearing sooner and quicker.  So the richer palette and abundance of stitching are to show the awaken of the growing season.

The leaf itself is divided into the two aspects.  The slight touch of green and woven stitch are the young growth.  The outline of the blackened lines are the cracks that have started to form on the old leaf of last summer.

 As April draws to a close, have May to look forward to.  More work needed in the garden - seedlings need transplanting and my indigo is sprouting.  Really need to hustle on that - it got colder and winder after the days of 80s which interrupted the garden schedule.  May cloth will be started, work on the fascicle project continuing, Magic  Diaries II is still in full swing and Contemporary Boro II about to commence.  The last two references are to  Jude's projects.

So, until my threads bring me back for another post...happy stitching and creating to all.

remembering a friend

 two circles for WAS: WAS

in your new garden home may there be many more

arriving with march

Emily Dickinson said, Dear March - Come In
So I invite you as well.  I've been gone a bit, I know.  But, I've been stitching away. I have finished fascicles 4 and 5. Only thirty-five more to go!  I will compose a separate blog for that but today I'm welcoming March. 

March cloth

Dear March - Come in - 

How glad I am -
I hoped for you before -
Put down your Hat - 
You must have walked -
How out of Breath you are - 
Dear March, how are you, and the Rest -
Did you leave Nature well - 
Oh March, Come right upstairs with me -
I have so much to tell -

and telling in the details:

detail

The cloth was first woven, ala cloth to cloth, and then stitched. The words on the cloth are there for me.  They are: 8th full moon, 3/14 pi day, 15th Ides, 2012, daffodils, after the Greek god of war, 31 days, Marze, Lentmont, 21 Spring and Ostara. Ostara is a Saxon/Germanic/pagan goddess that brings Spring. The swirls on the cloth are those March winds that have been blowing around. 

Ostara (1884) by Johannes Gehrts. The goddess flies through the heavens surrounded by Roman-inspired putti, beams of light, and animals. Germanic people look up at the goddess from the realm below.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostara

 
Another day remembered on the cloth is 11:00 am, March 11, 2008.  That is for my dad.  
I got your Letter, and the Birds - 
The Maples never knew that you were coming -
I declare - how Red their Faces grew -         
But March, forgive me - 
And all those Hills you left for me to Hue - 
There was no Purple suitable - 
You took it all with you - 

I also am going to do a Ides of March cloth - seems to me each month has an Ides but we only remember March's... Still a WIP but even so:

The cloth is dyed with the indigo carmine and acorn.  It was folded during the dye process hence the lines.   

Who knocks? That April -
Lock the Door -
I will not be pursued -
He stayed away a Year to call 
When I am occupied -         
But trifles look so trivial 
As soon as you have come

That blame is just as dear as Praise 
And Praise as mere as Blame -

I also played around a little with weaving.  Jude has been talking about it over at Spirit Cloth here and here.  This brought back memories of when I use to rent a loom...about 35+ years ago when I first moved out on my own.   I would spend my evenings at a place called The Weaving Workshop weaving away.  It gave me great fun to tell people where I worked that I was going out to warp!  Anyway this is what I did.  It's about 3x5 inches. The brown thread is my walnut dyed thread.  The blue is purchased cotton.  

weave experiment

My father made the little "lap loom" if I can call it that, many a many years ago :

dad's touch

I found this a while ago, going through a draw in one of my old room's at my mom's.  It brought back more memories. 

The poems is Emily Dickinson's "Dear March - Come In"

I should be back by week's end with fascicles 4 and 5.  Thank you for welcoming March in with me.  Spring can not be too far away.  Cheers

the old, the completed, and to be worked on: 2011+1=2012

Left the piece started a couple of month back is just about done:  99%

The project I started, probably back around middle of October or so is just about finished.  The lower left band has some stitches to finish...will be done by the stroke of mid-night 2011.  I will discuss the story and stitching after the new year. 

OakLight
Gifted to my sister....29 December 2011

This was a piece that I started playing with stitches in preparation for my 2012 little weekly challenge to me.  My fascicles project (see 2 posts ago).  Fascicle Project.  It is bases on the influence of several ideas, but mostly Emily Dickinson "self-published" bound fascicles.  The way she sewed and preserved her poems for herself.  She created 40 all together.  I'm hoping to get about forty done as well next year.  Here, below is the first fascicle.  The main character is an oak leaf, that will tell her story through the year: seasons, months, weeks, days, night, cold, heat.  Her own view from up high and from looking up.

Fascicle, 1.

The beginnings of the Fascicles project.  Each fascicle will be made up of four leaves, 6 pages with a front/back cover.  A single signature sewn with thread, probably red, since I don't use much red (read) thread and somehow I've gotten it into my head the ED used a color! Basic pamphlet style sewing: 3 holes sewn and tied through the center...leaving a frayed end, "somewhere for the eye to rest."  My very first binding teacher told me to fray the thread, leaving sort of a combed hair like effect.  This was her signature - her symbol.  Everyone who had ever studied with Joan Flasch does this same kind of tie-off, "to rest the eye." 

Text will be left and image right.  Various stitches will be used but mostly simple basic stitching.  The text for this page is: 

HappyOak

last of winter

with peace

at the door

contented, soon

i'll be no more

There will be 6 lines of text (including the name/title of the oak leaf that is speaking. I'm still trying to work out the method for including the text.  I will probably just write it without necessarily stitching it...I have planned 40 such fascicle, with 4 leaves, (8 pages): that's 320 pages of stitching.  A bit of stitching I'd say without the text...so it will probably just be "printed" in some fashion.

The fascicles will be my small relaxation project while doing part II of Jude Hill's: magic-diaries-part-2.  That will start in January and go through the end of June.  It is a subscription instructional workshop.  Wonderful things to be learned there. 

And finally:

leafing pages

Where and when it all started: 

The above piece I've called the Three Graces.  This was done is reaction to a post that Jude Hill did on her blog after the hurricane that passed this past Summer.  The one that did considerable damage along the Eastern Coast of the US. I remember Jude picking up an oak leaf and holding it, mentioning that a lot of the leaves were blown off the trees (last week in August - not tree mottling season by any means) and that they had lost one of the old oak trees that was on their property.  There was a feeling of sadness that translated into beauty.  Holding many moments without deciding, September 3, 2011

The image above is what I remember most of those days from her blog.  The cloth on the right became the Hurricane Cloth.  


I started looking and thinking about leaves very differently after that.  Watching especially those transitional ones - the ones that change color, fall, get walked/trampled on. Go from whole to fragments, dust and a final return. 


While collecting these leaves, I also posted a few blog entries, here, regarding Emily Dickinson.  I remember going to her home, entering and peaking to see if it was permitted to walk through a door that presented a cold, dark exhibition area.  It had formerly been a place where Emily use to sit and watch over her garden, changing through the seasons. She would hid out here, especially in the winter when, though not much warmer in this room, it was too cold to venture out.  On display there, there were a few folios that held open pages of her herbarium. (Herbaria are know to go back to the 1600.  They were those volumes upon volumes where people would press and hold flora.  Memory devices, I like to think, more then how we think of them today - botanic study tools.) How different were these from her fascicles? - those composed, stitched, hidden little one installment pamphlets that became her first "printed" edition of the poems.  They were small in size, spare in text,  but left riches for all time.  A small view into her private moments.  They were her secret keepers - her memory devices.  I like to think that her herbaria were not that different of a gesture.

Image of a fascicle page by Emily Dickinson

 For on-line views of some of the Dickinson archives go to:  Harvard Archive.
The library works closely with the Emily Dickinson Museum and the Emily Dickinson International Society to bring its collections to the public. Descriptive information about the family library and about Dickinson's manuscript books or fascicles, letters, herbarium, and family photographs are now on the Web, with a growing number of linked digital facsimiles. 

Page from Emily Dickinson -  Herbarium.  (left)          Cover, volume 1, Emily Dickinson -     Herbarium (right)


Several other objects of inspiration also came along to add to my thought processing.  One of Lynne Hoppe's blog: muslin pages tutorial, Lynne Hoppe actually got me thinking back to my days of book binding.  I spent a lot of my undergraduate years assembling what might be referred to as "artist's books."  A big part of my work was alternative photo-processed images that were then gather as books.  Lynne's muslin book brought back memories of those youthful, energetic, and spirited school days: 

I really got inspired to start thinking about actually doing cloth books with my stitching from this image.  So somewhere between the top image and Lynne's book this is what I ended up with as an initial step:

The image above is a translation of the first image on top of this blog page done in all cloth.  The are just pinned at this point.  The leaves are cloth that has been rusted and two leaves, one oak and one maple were use to trace the shape and then cut out.  This is pinned to a piece of muslin cloth. I then drew the face.  This piece in turn was pinned to a cloth that has been dyed in walnut, rust and indigo carmine.  Each piece in itself is about 8.5x10" - they are separate at the moment. 


These were the other additional things that came along which really contributed more fuel to my thoughts.  Robyn, Art Propelled did an entry on The Poetry of Leaves, December 7th.  I kept going back and looking at the images - they just really wouldn't go away. Wouldn't leave my thoughts.  Two of the artists she mentioned especially were intriguing to the mental composing that was going on during those nights that I couldn't sleep, and kept drawing in my mind.  Patrick Boehner and Ronald Chase.

  The two top images are from Patrick Boehner. 
 Left: Title: Found Objects (Beginning and End)
Artist: Patrick Boehner
Date: 2008
Height: 9 ½" | Width: 8" | Edition of 50, 1 AP 
Height: 7.7" | Width: 6.4" | Open Edition

Right: Title: Documentation and Interpretation (Imperfect Remains)

Artist: Patrick Boehner
Date: 2010
Height: 16 ½" | Width: 11 ½" | Edition of 25, 1 AP

The lower left is a 1994 book titled LEAF by Ronald Chase.  There isn't too much information that I could find about the size or edition.  But, I liked the "aged" look of the paper and the fragile quality.  It really reminded me of something Emily Dickinson might have picked up, held and looked at. 

The other two images come from the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, on-line data base.  I've put at the bottom of the blog page, beneath the comment box,  three links to on-line databases, with images, for those that might want to do some further image collecting.  In addition to the Field, there are Harvard University, the largest Herbarium in the US and the University of Michigan's on-line data base.  They titled their's Herbarium but in fact it is a archive of flora in Michigan.  Nice thing about their database, no Latin required.  

I should add also that I worked at the Field Museum of Natural History as a curatorial assistant for 3 years while I was an undergraduate...many a lunch break was spent investigating those dark, musty botany galleries.  

Finally another artist that I discovered making botanical prints is Katie Cooke.  Her photographic method is wet plat collodion - probably one of the oldest forms of making an image mechanically.  It requires a glass plate upon which a "gel" like medium is placed in which are suspended the crystals that will capture the image.  A tricky process but such an incredible end product. 

So this brings me, now, to what I'm doing with all this information.  

This is my journal page with the ideas outlined for  this blog's text. 

 I started collecting leaves shortly after Jude's Hurricane Cloth inspiration.  Each leaf was unique and fascinating treasure.  I think I have them all over my house and  in books.  I just hope I'm going to remember where I've tucked them all in.  One day I will open those pages and find crumbles of leaves falling out - I'll remember (hopefully) and smile.  The top left is a mock-up of a "fascicle."  I'm planning on stitching up little books of the leaves as they go through the seasons during next year.  They will be traced, stitched/embellished and "bound" into little fascicle like studies.  I want to use naturally dyed cloth for the actual "leaf" images but the base cloth will be unbleached muslin.  (this will be sort of a on-going project in addition to the work I'll be doing over with Jude at Diaries, 2012.  Sometime, I'm finding, small in hand "sketching" "skatching" "skitching" and cloth- journalling  - defined as in daily/routine - is a nice break to practice ideas, stitches, general thinking, that might fuel a little of the other work.) 

Below cloth for leaf "fascicle" project:

Top rust, middle oak leaf cooked and soaked for three weeks, bottom tea. 

Two stitched up leaves that I have completed are: (these are practice pieces)

Oak leaf appliqued, dyed: rust; base cloth, dyed: indigo carmine 

Oak leaf traced and stitched on dyed cloth, acorn; commercially produced cloth

I started these as a small distraction, relief, to stitching the cloth that I'm working on for Magic Diaries, LEFT.  LEFT, is just about done.  Hopefully next week I'll be showing the cloth as a finished product.  Lots of little stitches and a few rough days with mom's health have not made the work just a slow cloth but a slower cloth.  

The above book is made by Aimee Lee.  Her blog is: It's My Party, this was featured on  Wake Robin's blog.  

I would also be remiss if I didn't give a nod to velma.  Her books just take my breath away. Images like those above and below can be found through out  Velma's blog. 

References:

Logan, William Bryant.  Oak: the frame of civilizatio.  New York:  W. W. Norton, 2004

Miller, Howard A. Oaks of North America.  Happy Camp, CA:  Naturegraph ,  1984.        

Finally my favorite bibliophile's quote on the leaf.  It's from John Carter's ABC for Book Collectors. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press and The British Library; 8th edition (June 1, 2004)

This is absolutely one of the treasure from my days as a Library Science student.  Not all our text books could make one laugh! 

Leaf:  The basic bibliographical unite:  the piece of paper comprising one page on its front side (recto, obverse) and another on its back (verso, reverse).  Leaf, leaves are abbreviated to l., ll., or f., ff. (from folio).  The inaccurate and slovenly misuse of page for leaf (e.g. 'the verso of p. 73,' 'the title-page is a cancel') appears to be on the increase and should be pilloried when found. Maybe only librarians, bibliophiles, and binders will find this amusing...but please, if you find such errors, do pillorize for the old boy!  

                                    

 And if you leave here with nothing else then a new word - word for the day kind of thing:  dendrology, the study of trees.  Dendriod is also nice - resembling a tree.  Now I need to find the word for study of leaves.  I'm sure there must be one...if not, I'll just have to....


Postscript to anyone who might be viewing this blog...if I have used your images incorrectly, my apologies.  I haven't been blogging that long so some of the etiquette of the internet is still part of my learning curve.  Hopefully I will be wiser in the future. Thank you.