Tag: Stitch Project: TRIANGULATION

– Remembering to keep things in perspective: A matter of scale

~ Liz A ~ 15 Comments
Triangulation has passed the three-quarter mark, so I’m now squarely in the southwest …
I belatedly realized that a scale might be useful. As near as I can figure, Triangulation comes in at 50 miles to the inch …

making the entire cloth 1800 miles wide by 1100 miles high … which sounds way more impressive than 36 inches by 22 inches.

It’s all a matter of perspective, which has been much on my mind since today is the anniversary of my mother-in-law’s passing on April 19, 2010.

I may have learned “Food is love” from my mom, but I learned how to be a grandmother from Betty May Angus Ackert, who practiced love unconditionally.  Her granddaughters were the brightest, most beautiful children on the planet and absolutely without fault in her eyes.

They loved her absolutely in return. And what child wouldn’t love having a sleepover room, a kitchen window that doubled as a fast-food drive-in, a lovable golden retriever to snuggle, and visits to the dollar store for fashionable jewelry …

I could always tell when the girls were on the phone with Grandma, who knew how to ask open-ended questions that triggered an animated retelling of whatever was uppermost on their minds. They knew she hung on their every word and the proof of their shared love was clear to see, even in their teenage eyes …

I hope I can live up to her example …

– Way finding: Triangulation continues

~ Liz A ~ 13 Comments

Triangulation definitely needed a compass rose and I also wanted to put a sun symbol over New Mexico. In the end, I melded the two notions into one …
Sketched in permanent ink, it wasn’t perfect, but I’m getting better at accepting that. 
So now that I’ve reached New Mexico, I’m pondering whether or not to use the Desert Sand DMC floss I picked out …
Finally, having passed the half-way mark in Kantha stitching, I decided to try draping the cloth, which is really too large for a flat-on-the-floor shot …

To be continued …

– Of books and backs

~ Liz A ~ 10 Comments

Anne Lamott and Anna Quindlen are two of my all-time favorite authors (see links in the OTHER ARTISTS AND AUTHORS sidebar to the right). So, when I read a library copy of Anne Lamott’s Stitches, I thought it would be cool to get my own copy and stitch the best passages, rather than underline them as I usually do. Initially unable to find a copy readily available, I decided to apply the same idea to Anna Quindlen’s Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake …
It’s been interesting trying out backstitch …

and double running stitch …
versus plain running stitch …

But honestly, at this point I’m not quite sure how I feel about it … so I’m letting the idea compost for a while.

Meanwhile, I’m still plugging away on Triangulation (65 squares stitched, 95 to go). Taking a cue from Grace, I hung it in a window (which was only partially sunlit) and took some pictures of the back (so east is to the left and west is to the right) …

Here’s the B-side of the arch in St Louis, where the only thing holding the cloth strips together is running stitch and some embellishing stitches …

This view shows intersecting horizontal and vertical running stitches – an attempt to better fill the gaps in the cloth weaving …
Tulsa, Oklahoma at the intersection of I-44 and I-75
And this view shows how much more substantial the back stitch proved to be in stabilizing the cloth weaving (fortunately, I figured that out about a quarter of the way into the initial stitching) …
The flip side of southbound 35, Austin and San Marcos

As I’ve mentioned before, never will I ever again cloth-weave sheeting and back it with Harem cloth. Besides which, what was I thinking tackling a piece this size to begin with? But I must say continues to be an interesting exercise in problem solving.
Postscript: Southbound 35 is what I slip in the CD player when we cross the Red River from Oklahoma into Texas …