Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to All. We had our Thanksgiving yesterday, so here are a few photos of our celebration. Come in the kitchen and pull up a chair.

I did cook up a proverbial storm yesterday. At the end of the evening my legs were killing me.
Alex was working on the computer through the day. I had to hide behind the plant and then sneak up on him to get a picture of him smiling.
Allie made the mashed potatoes, which were delicious.
Oh, a crafty aside: the kitchen rug I finished crocheting from old t-shirts. Waste not, want not, right?
And here's everyone getting ready for the feast. That's Michael my honey on the right and that's Allie's boyfirend Roger opposite him. Yum, we had a great dinner. Many blessing to you and yours on this special day.

New Links

I'm going to try to post working links to yesterday's post. I'm not sure what happened, but I'm hoping for working links.

Marie Antoinette

The Age of Innocence

I think these are going to work. For some reason I couldn't link to the Vogue cover--oh well, two out of three.

Fabric in the movies

I went to the movies yesterday to see Marie Antoinette with my daughter. One of the benefits of having an 18 year old daughter is that I have someone to go to chick flicks with. I was interested in seeing the film because from the previews and from the Vogue photo spread I could tell that there was going to be some excellent fabric eye candy in the movie. Kristen Dunst was charming in the film. She evolves from a 14 year old princess to a mature woman. But the film is poorly paced, lingering way too long over Marie Antoinette's problem of getting her teenage husband to consummate the marriage. Apparently it took years for this to happen, and Sophia Coppola, the director, seems to have wanted us to feel the full effect of the delay. The post-consummation portion of the story doesn't have much drama, and then suddenly, the film is over.

But the eye candy! The velvets! The ruffles! The tassles! The lace masks in the masked ball scene! The shoes! Oh, and there's cake too. It's worth it to see this movie just to see the linens. Curiously, although the film gives a nod to what we call in literary criticism multi-temporal heterogeneity by incorporating a contemporary rock music score with a pre-rock music era story (which we also saw in the movie Moulin Rouge), the costumes and sets look historically accurate. Or at least what we expect historically accurate to look like through the lens of Hollywood movies.

This movie has got me to thinking about other fabric-friendly movies. Another favorite of mine is Martin Scorcese's The Age of Innocence. There is a wonderful scene where Daniel Day-Lewis kisses Michelle Pheiffer's shoe, and we can see the detail of the sumptuous hem of her dress. It's practically fabric porn. Do you have a favorite fabric movie?

New Projects

Thanks to everyone for their compliments on my crazy quilt. I've hung it on a wall in the entry to my house, so people can see it through the window as they stand at the front door. It's 26x26 inches, and I do find myself referring to it for ideas as I work on the block in Sharon B's crazy quilt class.

Here are some projects I'm currently working on. This is a block for a pink and green quilt I'm making for myself. I was inspired by this fabric with cakes on it. and I'm making some blocks as well as a border with this fabric. The other fabrics are various pink, green and white fabrics. The effect is very light and cheerful.



I'm also knitting this scarf from some alpaca I'd been visiting at the local yarn shop until it went on sale. It's a pretty easy pattern and alpaca is so soft it's wonderful to knit with. It is slippery, so I'm knitting it on bamboo needles, which are my favorite anyway. I like the light weight of bamboo, and metal needles feel heavy by comparison.


I have had some good finds lately at the thrift store. I recently found a lot of crochet cottons in different weights that I am using in my crazy quilts. As you can see I have enough to last several lifetimes, so if you'd like some lengths of random colors, don't be shy, send me an email.


Yesterday, I snagged this partially-embroidered kit for fifty cents. I think I'm developing a thing for Holly Hobby. She was very popular in the 70s when I was in highschool, and when I see Holly Hobby things, they always attract my attention. For now, I'm finishing this panel, which I hope to use with some pre-cut rectangles of Holly fabric that I've got stashed away. Of course the fabric is in brown and orange.


Speaking of brown and orange, this is a new cat who has come to live with us. I'm calling her Lucy for the moment, after Lucille Ball, since she's a strawberry blonde. (She also coordinates nicely with the rugs, as you can see.) We're not real sure, however that she's a she, so this is a provisional name and subject to change. In the meantime, she's got a lovely personality and gets along fine with cats 1-3. My daughter and I have an understanding that you can have up to five cats before you hit Crazy Cat Lady status, so we're still one under the limit.

Ta-Dah!

I finished my CQ project inspired by Sharon's 100 details series. It was a fun project, and I enjoyed trying out different embellishment techniques and basically experimenting with how much embellishment a piece of fabric will bear. The other good thing about CQ is that it entitles you to be in a continuous collecting mode. I'm now on a perpetual search for interesting buttons and threads. I've also collected a few interesting neckties to use in the sample for Sharon's on-line CQ class.

I'll hang this one on the wall, as I don't have a baby grand piano to drape it on. It would be nice on a small table, but the cats would think it's a new platform for them to lay on and survey their domain.

Things are good on the home front. Alex is working and going to school and singing with his band. Allie has just been offered a full-time (but temporary) job doing data entry. She is interested in doing office work so this is her chance to try it out and see if going to college isn't such a bad idea after all. I'm waiting to get my car fixed, working on my Japanese ladies quilt, and I've collected fabric for a new quilt I want to make as a birthday gift for myself. It's pink and green. I'll post pictures of the fabric as soon as I get my camera back from Allie. Everytime I go to use it I have to ask her for it back.

This and That

Wow, it's been awhile since I've posted, but right now I'm between work-related shit-storms, so I've been able to take a breath, do some creative work, and catch up with myself.

Awhile back I knitted ipod "sweaters" for my daughter Allie, her boyfriend Roger, and for one of Allie's teachers. A couple of her friends recently asked if I would make them ipod sweaters too, so last weekend I whipped out two new ones for them.


This is brainless straight knitting, but the fun part is using up scraps (my true passion) and inventing a tiny thing that kind of looks like a sweater. Stripes are fun, but I also used some acrylic mohair to imitate a fuzzy sweater. The girls were really cute when they asked if they could pay me to make these for them. I said, "oh, that's okay, it only takes 20 minutes," which is not quite true, but it's fun anyway.

I finished sewing together the crazy quilt blocks I made when I cleaned out my scrap drawer. The scraps included the leftover pieces of that Alexander Henry fabric "Las Senoritas." The women look like they're peeking out from the blocks in a flirtatious way, so I've named this quilt "Las Coquetas" (the coquettes). It's 62x62 and it'll either be a lap quilt or a large tablecloth.



I had these blocks left over from when I made my Pineapple Blossom quilt, and I made them into a table runner. I love the yellow bee fabric I used for the border. Bumble bees are always so cheerful.


Allie Aller tagged me with the Five Weird Things Meme. Reading other people's responses impresses me with how so many of us are weird in similar ways. So are we weird or normal? Well, here's my list, and I'm going to stretch to dig up the Truly Weird.

1. I have a transgendered canary. I wanted one that sang and only the males sing. The woman at the shop assured me that the canary I was buying was a singer, so I brought him home and named him Pancho, after the canary my grandmother had when I was growing up. After I'd had him for a week or so and he still hadn't sung, I realized that Pancho was never going to sing because he is a she. When I told my daughter that I was thinking of taking her back back to the shop Allie said, "Mom, you have to accept her as she is." So Pancho became Pancha. I love her to death. She doesn't sing, but she has a wonderful personality and she's very beautiful.
2. I perceive personalities in birds.
3. I am so spacially challenged that I was 13 or 14 when I finally learned my left from my right.
4. I have narrow feet with high arches and so I have terrible balance and I'm very particular about shoes. I like nice-looking shoes, but I won't wear anything uncomfortable. If I find stylish shoes that are comfortable, I feel like I hit the jackpot.
5. I hate to have the sun in my face, and so if I'm outside and it's sunny, I almost always wear a hat, particularly if I'm walking. I have a black woven hat that's that's my favorite.

So, is that weird enough?

Fourth Fan

Sharon's 100 details series is winding down. I can't believe she's in the 90s already. I've pretty much finished my fourth fan. The blade with the dragonflies is provisional. I'm saving that space for one or two last seam treatments, and I'll probably wait until the end of the series to decide what to put there. I really appreciate Sharon's generousity and inspiration. Crazy quilting isn't something I'd ever anticipated trying my hand at, but it's been fun.


In this photo, from left to right, is rick-rack with wheatear stitch and beads, herringbone stitch with detached chains and buttons, and fern stitch with buttons and French knots.

I showed the stitches on the left here before, but I added a crazy composition on the right: ribbon, beads, straight stitches and buttons.
In the open areas that are left, I'm going to do motifs. I found the Rosetta Stone of crazy quilting: Carole Samples's Treasury of Crazy Quilt Stitches, a wonderful book. There are no instructions, but there are hundreds of stitches organized by type, as well as a selection of various kinds of motifs. I'm looking forward to finishing this project.

Okay, Now I'm Old

I'm still using my 49th year, and I got my invitation to join AARP, the big senior citizens lobby. To underscore the point, my baby turned 16. I remember him when he a a sweet chubby-cheeked baby, and now he's a hard-edged local rock star. Here's a clipping from a newspaper story about a recent gig. I was cool at one time, now I'm cool's mom.

That's my baby with the microphone.



I had a wonderful time at my Labor Day reunion with my circle of college girlfriends. (That's me in the back with the pink blouse.) The years mean nothing when you're with people who shared important times with you. We were undergrads together at a fancy schmancy women's college. Out of a student body of 900, there were never more than 20 Chicana (Mexican American) students there at any one time, so we were drawn together by our common experiences as working class daughters of immigrant parents or grandparents and by our shared experience as first-generation college students. Few people expected us to end up in college in those days, much less at the fancy schmancy women's college, but with each other's support, and with the support of our teachers and mentors (the grayer folks in the photo) we have all done well. We knew the responsibility we bore to our communities as college grads, so many of us work in education as teachers, librarians, or administrators. It's wonderful to realize how stong the bonds of friendship are after all these years.

In the quilting department, I'm working very slowly on my hand embellished crazy quilt. I'm not sure I want to finish it, so I'm not hurrying to work on it right now. I've also been trying to catch up on my journal quilts for this year, and I've "made up" 3 months that I'd not yet done. I wonder if it counts as a journal entry if you do it 3 months late? I'll have pictures soon.

Signing My Name

...well not my name, but my initials. I decided to put my initials into this quilt, and it got a little Las Vegas-y on me with the pearls and all, but I decided not to take it out (for the moment). It's hard to tell but this is chain stitch embellished with small pearls. I also did my homage to Georgia O'Keefe by giving this steer head a crown of flowers. I must've used the flash on this picture, because the lighting is over-exposed.

I've also been making the blocks for this crazy quilt by cleaning out my scrap drawer. It's pretty much empty now, and I love this kind of mindless sewing. I have a lovely red border for it, red being my favorite neutral. When I get inspired I'll sew it all together and put on the border. I won't be embellishing this quilt as it really is just a utility piece.



I'm off to San Francisco on Saturday for a reunion of my college girlfriends. I haven't seen several of them for many years, and I'm very excited. I also hope to visit some museums and to eat at some good restaurants. I'll report back next week.

A Small Break in the CQ Flow

Awhile back I posted a picture of some Alexander Henry fabric I'd bought called "Las Senoritas." Well, I ended up buying a second piece of it to make Michael a Hawaiian-style shirt. Here's how it came out:

I used a McCall's pattern that is marketed as a "2-hour" project. This is an optimistic estimate, but it's a simple pattern, and for the man's version you don't need to make any darts. For the first time I used the button-holer on my Janome 6500, which is approaching its first birthday. I even sewed the buttons on by machine, which I'd heard of but had never tried. It's very cool, though I'm not sure it actually saves that much time.

Michael is an avid collector of Hawaiian shirts, so he was very happy to have this one. When he bought one with pin-up girls and martini glasses on it, I knew he wouldn't be self conscious about wearing "Las Senoritas." If I had it to do again, I would make sure that the repeats in the fabric didn't line up in the front. Those two women with the hats side-by-side draw a lot of focus to themselves.

I do have an update on my CQ fans. I decided to sit down and tackle some of the stitches that had given me some trouble. I set up my computer and read through step by step the very helpful stitch dictionary directions on Sharon's blog with the sampler and the threaded needle in my hand. Here are my yellow bullion stitches, which I tried with both 6 and 3 strands of floss, my up and down buttonhole stitch with pink oyster stitch embellishments, a pekinese stitch in which I used a thin green ribbon to thread the back stitches, and some embellished rick-rack.



I marked the curved line for the up and down buttonhole vine with a quarter and a sliver of soap. I may move to embellish the open areas now, and leave a few fan blades for straight line embellishments in the series that I can't resist.

Third Fan Finished!

I've finished the third fan in my sampler. Here are some of the details I used from Sharon's 100 details challenge:

Here I used a beaded button, beads and chain stitches to embellish a bit of lace. I've had these Peter Rabbit buttons for a long time. I've always loved Beatrix Potter characters.

I liked the look of the stacked chevron stitches. I composed some beads in the empty spaces in the middle.

Here I used a buttonhole stitch with a bead composition.

Ta-dah! The third finished block! I have enough of the gold trim to use on all four fans. I trimmed the bottom of this one with a ribbon and beads. Debra had a good tip about putting a small bead in the middle of those red caston stitches to keep them from flopping around. It works great.

As I'm getting to the end of this project I'm thinking ahead to the next one(s). I've got this unquilted fish themed top and I'm thinking of doing an underwater embellishment.

Fan Update

I've done a few more fan blades on my crazy quilt. On the left is my version of Day 51's silk ribbon daisy. Next to that is jumbo rick-rack embellished with straight stitches, detached chains, and buttons. It reminds me of a Jane Sassaman tree.



On the left in this photo is whipped feather stitch and tiny caston flowers. I used slippery 2mm silk to whip stitch so it slides around a lot. I won't use that combination again. Next to that is some vintage trim embellished with beads, straight, and chain stitch. I ran out of the lavender pearl cotton before I finished the row, but I found more in my statsh today so I can finish up.

I starting to think about how to embellish the open spaces around the fans. These are some nice distinct spaces in which to do something special.

Shisha

Annie posted instructions on how to do shisha embroidery and in her example, she used it to attach a coin. I took her idea and dug out some coins left from my trip to Mexico last year. I like the idea of using things with memories attached to them.

I also unearthed some old issues of Piecework magazine, and in one from 1994 they had an article on shisha embroidery with a lesson that incorporated cretan stitch, so I incorporated that as well. Now that I'm doing this embroidery work, I'm looking through old books and magazines that I haven't used in a long time and scanning them for ideas.

In my civilian life I'm getting ready to go back to school and I'm also doing research for a scholarly article I'm writing. I have made the important discovery that if I sit at a table and don't work on anything complicated, I can knit and read at the same time. I'm currently knitting a throw from this recent fun book (great for beginners). With both needle and pen, I have become a truly dangerous woman.

Second Fan Finished

I've finished the second of my four wool fans. I find that I'm using Sharon's 100 details embellishment ideas as a basis for my own improvisation.

I attached a hand charm to this ribbon embroidery bouquet of lavender, and that's my palestrina stitch on the right as a basis for the beaded flowers (lilacs?) with detached chain leaves.

I'm repeating purple pearl cotton and glass beads, as well as the black cats, to create unity. The gold braid will also be used to trim each fan. In the next fan I really want to try the caston stitch, and some of the straight stitch combinations.

Fan Update

My second fan is coming along. I feel like I'm thinking more about how each block will relate to the others.







I included in my button cluster a western-themed button cover. I have more that I'll work into the other blocks.
















I love my spider and web. The instructions are from Annie's Crazy World (sorry, the link wouldn't work.) I used backstitch on my web instead of straight stitch because my thread was wobbly.







I made these open cretan stitches on the bottom with poly ribbon, which is harder to pull through fabric than silk, and I beaded them in gold. On the top, I beaded a piece of vintage trim.

























And I have finished this small (45x45) quilt titled "Remapping Arizona."
























I used this vintage tablecloth for the back:




















It has a copyright mark. Any guesses about what "USHP" stands for?