Another pairing

April 3, 2021November 3, 2021 ~ Liz A ~ 14 Comments

March 21, 2021 – E’s someday quilt (*revised 4/20/21*)

I commented over at Jude’s blog today that there’s nothing like spring green, but this patch was actually made on March 20th when the world tipped us into Spring (while it likewise tipped our Australian friends into Autumn).

Tina’s bright green cloth was a perfect match for the trees leafing up outside my stitching window. And it occurred to me that the same green appears in one my favorite paintings …

purchased many years ago at the antique mall in Williamsburg, Virginia for not more than $50 …

It’s signed Grace Badkins, who I tried to track down on the internet when we first bought the painting …

I tried again recently and this time I found her in the 1940 Census …

which had been released since the last time I looked …

I even found her mother-in-law’s obituary which revealed that she lived at 109 Matoaka Court, a street well-known to us back in the day …

And I couldn’t help thinking, if only we had internet resources like this back when I was a research librarian at Colonial Williamsburg … my job would have been far simpler!

Anyway, to wrap up a very long story, I made patch with a bit of Tina’s dye magic, taking a cue from the railing in the last close-up of Grace’s painting and adding a dark band on top and a bit of satin stitch to top it off …

The story of the second patch is simpler. Sunday, March 21 was a day full of the Grand Ennui (with thanks to Mike Nesmith for naming the feeling in his song of the same name, and to Walt Wilkins for covering it).

Not feeling at all like stitching, I spent the better part of the day deconstructing Ellis’s outgrown baby clothes in preparation for making her a coverlet, along with a patch to mark the day I officially started …

I guess you could say I’ve got my work cut out for me 😉

But at least that’s another week done …

Giving it up

April 2, 2021April 2, 2021 ~ Liz A ~ 16 Comments

As we worked in Meg and Paul’s yard, removing the dead and dying plants that didn’t make it through the week-long freeze, we debated about the thorn-crested agaves (which we mistakenly called Spanish daggers back in the day) …

We had transplanted them a few years back from our Hill Country house, where we had more than a few to spare …

In fact, if you look closely at left side of the first picture, you can see some of the “pups” that made them so prolific. So yeah, they were sentimental favorites for sure.

But when I tried to cut off the freeze-dried blades at Meg’s, the results were far from eye-pleasing. Besides, I rationalized, they’re kinda dangerous around little ones, given the barbed nature of the edges, which hook back and can do some serious damage …

So the decision was made to pull them out. Although I didn’t have the heart to photograph them at the time, I wished I had. That’s when I got the idea to make a memory patch of a single blade.

I found some pale green silk and a scrap of hand-dyed cotton with a mottled color that reminded me of damaged foliage.

I folded and pressed the silk and “pinned” it to the cotton with my finest needles. Then I worked out a funky kind of blanket stitch that reminded me of the barbed agave spines …

So while I guess I’m glad the agaves are gone for now, I suspect there may be some pups hidden in the soil that may yet come up … ya never know.

It’s a stretch

April 1, 2021 ~ Liz A ~ 14 Comments

My patches are getting longer as I realized the patches for the first half of the month of March came up short. It will all balance out at the end, I’m sure.

The waxing crescent moonrise was spotted in a beautiful blue sky trimmed out in green, although this photo was taken later, so there is no moon in sight …

The lit edge of the moon was turned toward the sun, which had risen a few hours earlier.

I’m continuing to play with different ways to represent the moon phases, and can see some potential with this attempt that features a continuous outer edge and a discontinuous inner edge …

As always, Deb Lacativa’s dyed cloth was just what I needed.

The inspiration for the second patch was two-fold: the arrival of some Dharma Trading quilter’s cotton sateen and a post over at Deb Gorr’s blog that put the idea of Braille into my head.

I actually had some tangential experience with Braille when I worked in the Government Documents department of the Texas State University library. I was always fascinated by how supple the pages were and how inscrutable the dots seemed. I never failed to run my fingertips over them each time a new Braille publication arrived.

I pieced together two pieces of sateen, using both sides of the cloth to compare the “right” and “wrong” sides (both equally usable in my opinion) …

As you can see, I stitched the Braille dots with French knots, but not before doing some research on how close together the dots and cells needed to be spaced …