Miscellaneous Musings.....

No pix to share today. Instead of stitching yesterday, I spent some time with the latest issue of Quilting Arts Magazine. Always a happy day when that shows up in the mail! Their 2007 calendar challenge is described somewhat like: make a quilt inspired by the setting, a character or a mood in a favorite fiction book. This just seems amazingly difficult to me. There's a big difference between making something beautiful and evoking a mood. I would like to do something like this, but don't even know how to start thinking about it. Do you truly pick a book you love and go from there? (You can't use any images or phrases from the book because of copyrights) Or do you choose a technique or an idea that you think you could do and find a book to match? I guess this really puts me in the category of craftsperson, not artist. Of course I have no training in the arts, but I'd really like to know how to traverse this path from A(book) to B(idea).

The other thing I spent yesterday doing was pouring through Carol Sample's book, looking for that trellis pattern. At first I thought it would be impossible to find. But then I realized that I had never actually read the book, just looked at the pictures, which is a bad habit of mine. Her categorization of all the stitch types is so left-brain for such a right brain activity as making these beautiful stitches! I was surprised.

On a humorous note, I was thinking back to when I was embroidering my jeans as a teenager in the 70s. I didn't know the stem stitch, so did a lot of outlining of motifs in backstitch. I didn't like the way the outline looked chopped up, so I would go back and whip the outline to make it look better. I thought I had invented the whipped backstitch! The funny thing is, though, that I didn't think it was a good thing, I just thought of it as "cheating" to get my final motif to look better. Teenagers.....

Today I was teaching my daughter how to sew (she's 13). We are making a stuffed dragon. It has felt spines on its back that had to be sewn together. I showed her the usual method - stitch to the point, needle-down, rotate and continue stitching. There were about 10 of these spines. I sometimes forget she's still a child. Every time she got to the "rotate" part, she would sing out "Wheeeeeee!”

We had to cut off a few spines after they were sewn together. She loved ripping out some of the stitches, (she has a totally different attitude toward the seam ripper than I do) then played with this little thing that was left. Sometimes it was a bird, sometimes a plane, sometimes a pterodactyl, sometimes an elephant. Later she spent 2 hours cutting minute pieces of felt for legs, attaching sequined fabric on its back and sewing on 2 sequin eyes. Now she has this cute little 3" dragon that she's so proud of! Kids are amazing....