handstories

Day to Day

    Friday afternoon...  I did not see this one coming at all.  Was really loving the colors of the base patchwork (including a Threadcrumbs moon), and went looking for hill cloth.  The flower was the right color, and the curve of the framing border suggested a hill shape, and those hot pink dots... There was a "What if?" moment, and then a going.

    Saturday morning... A hard morning- a household weariness over everything and all of the unknowns, and nothing really that can be done.  Definitely was not feeling the red flower.  Said to myself, "You should work on something that's going to work," but kept on.

    Starting with saving the inside of the hill, the patchwork that I liked so much, using Jude's "managing layers" technique.  

    A moment of debating stars, dots or crosses for the sky, and then a yes to it all.

    "What a Difference a Day Makes"

    It could have been named lots of things- Believing, It Was There All Along, Holding Hope, or Almost.  

    Next...

evolutions

    Starting with a small stack of blue, what I thought would be a sea was pieced together.  A pink sky was imagined (there is something going on between pink and me lately...).  When the blues were stitched, suddenly they were sky like.  Ok, a green ground.  The green basket was pulled out.  Digging until something spoke to me... the map printed fabric, the earth, yep.  From there the pinks came together into a sun with reaching rays and blue stitches orbiting.

    Those rings of blue are related to a bunch of recent things...

    Spirals have been on my mind again, triggered by Jude's edge stitching, and reinforced when this piece turned up in that box wander last week.

 

 

    It's an interpretation of 13 year-old Moon's "hand" drawn galaxy, from five years ago.

    And then a necklace was seen.  I wish I had a photo of it.  At first I thought it was a cool spiral, not perfect, with lines crossing each other.  With a closer view, I saw that it was actually several separate silver pieces- circle, oval, and lopsided roundish rings, all of them hanging together from a thin chain, lines overlapping, sliding ever-so-slightly into new forms with each movement.  

    It's fascinating to me that the placement of lines can create the illusion of a different shape.  Concentric or overlapping rings seem a spiral, straight lines crossing each other at a center point feel round.

    The stars were added without thinking, and then questioned when I remembered that it was a Sun, not a moon.  Should the stars come out?  (Ha, thinking about how we say that the stars come out at night, meaning the complete opposite.)  The stars were left, because they are always there, even when we can't see them, but mostly because I like them.  And why should the moon be missing?  Why not?  The moon came out, too.

    Everything is and holds everything these days.

the moon & other wonders

    It started with a piece of cloth full of Shibori (Nui Shibori?), a gift from Jude.  Each one is like a truffle.  I just love them.  When this golden centered one was placed on a piece of Tina's lavender cloth, it reminded me of the moon.  There was some thinking about rectangle vs circle, and what if the moon was different than we know?  Still not sure where this piece is going, the ideas keep coming, and changing.

    Last night we watched a PBS show about the landing on the moon.  And imagined what it must have felt like to see up close, step on, and know the moon?  There was some sadness too, for the unknown being lost.  It's not made of cheese, no one is living in it...  

    Something is lost with too much knowing.

dallying with dots

    Jude inspired some dotty thinkings.  Not quite sure, but curious about how the swiss dots/clipped spots might work, I decided to give it a whirl, because what's not to love about dots?

    Jude described the making of them as "...extra threads are loose woven all the way across the cloth and just caught in certain spots. They are clipped back later."  So, it started with threads going across.  Because of the tiny gap from each stitch, I worried that the dots would open up to the sides when they were cut, rather than stand straight up.  Going back and forth at different angles seemed like a possible solution.

    The first few were made with lots of little loops which were then trimmed down.  After these, the quest for success went all over the place.  The best ones were stitched by pulling the needle all the way through to the back of the cloth, and then bringing the needle straight back up as close as possible, allowing the threads to be packed into the same hole.

    Insecurity made me tie a knot through the gathered threads with the last stitch.  (My trust issues need more work.)

    What will be carried into the next attempt:  They took longer than imagined, and a lot of thread.  They'll be made further apart.  I'd like to try the line method again, this time with the needle passing all the way through to each side with each stitch, or maybe working them from the center out, spiraling rather than in lines.  So many ways to go...

    I'm sure this was a wackadoodle way of going about this- but they are cute, quite fuzzy, fun to touch, and it was really good to play.

making a daydream

    What if the moon were made of patches of stitches, silk and stars?  And what if we could curl up in the space where they all melt together for rest and dreaming?

    And what if this all happened while softly bobbing along in the sea?

some strange skies

    We had a reprieve from the heat yesterday, only mid-70's. Quite pleasant.  Today is supposed to be 10 degrees higher . . .

    Looking out the back in the evening, the sun was such a deep reddish orange.  The camera couldn't catch it.

    What if anything could happen?

let the what iffing begin . . .

    For a couple of months I've been wishing for a slight change at my job.  Yesterday, I wondered, "What if I just asked?", and did, and a "Sure." was the answer.  Who knew it could be that easy?

    Gosh, I fall in love with Jude's invisible basting dots, every time.

    No "what if's" about this empty space just yet, still enjoying the looking . . . it's such a rare phenomenon in our house.