To be or not to be …

~ Liz A

precise …

because precision has been much on my mind as I’ve stitched this past week. Whether ’tis nobler to suffer the pains of constant measuring to create the next granddaughter coverlet in Meg’s beloved herringbone …

or to let go of preconceptions and simply make patch after patch after patch … and then put all the puzzle pieces together somehow (thank you for the concept, Jude) …

This last not for a baby coverlet, but simply for the love of it. Because I confess that I’ve had much fun tearing and ironing dyed cloth into 1 1/4″ and 1 1/2″ and 1 3/4″ strips (as I did way back when for the original Land of Flood and Drought). Then cutting the strips into random lengths, so there is no regularity in the width of the resulting patches.

And I likewise confess to being influenced by this Agnes Martin painting as I imagined how the patches might fit together (and I do want/need to learn more about her and her art) …

It remains to be seen where this all goes …

N.B. The dyed cloth comes from multiple sources:

Maura Ambrose’s dye workshop

Deb Lacativa’s Fat Baggies

Fiber on a Whim (great color variation, but the cotton is a bitch to hand stitch)

Tierney Barden (with thanks to Sue McQuade for the gift that led me to this new source)

20 thoughts on “To be or not to be …”

    1. I managed to resist Tierney’s August box, but the description of September’s earth tones hooked me … again

      As for herringbone, it seemed like it was going to be too fiddly, from the various directions I looked at. Until I decided to just try doing it as a take-off on Jude’s paperless piecing (using 1” x 3” patches). Not so bad after all.

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  3. Way back, in the 1980’s, my EX was a ceramic tilesetter (a craftsman)… herringbone was popular for a time. It was kind of a pain, but he was good at it. So I came here and am reminded of a past me. xo

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    1. Don made a herringbone piece out of wood for P’s room … it is deceptive in its seeming simplicity … and yes, craftsman (as opposed to tradesman) fits the need

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  4. Loving both the fabrics in the herringbone and the pattern itself. Sometimes its good to focus and be precise; other times random wobbliness makes us so happy! So good that you can do them side by side and you don’t have to feel as if you are missing out on one or the other.

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  8. Your rings of squares glow happily together. The herringbone is admirable and pretty, but the idea of doing it makes me shiver with stress. K. always likes the building block pattern, but I know we’d all be sorry if I did it.

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  9. I am always struggling with the tension between wobbly and precise. I seek precision, but then have to accept some wobble just to get along.

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