Busy Woman

 I have been a busy woman.

I think this may be because I have been feeling unhappy about how the world is turning out & making things is a place where I feel calm, purposeful, & productive. I feel impotent to change the Bad State of Affairs, but I can make things that make me happy & maybe bring pleasure to others.

It's crazy that, having gotten rid of unwanted cloth in 3 different ways [Sally Ann, Emily Carr soft sculpture studio, & FabCycle] I am working from the smallest collection of cloth ever!   Regardez!!

Well, actually, that's not really all, I have two small scrap containers: one for darks & one for lights.

So here is my latest batch of work.

This one I call 30 Inch Square Dance.

This one I call Quintet. I see the 5 shapes as buddies playing in the orchestra of my dreamy happy color zone.

Immediately there were leftovers that lead to My Garden of Eden.

They clearly are a duet!

Ooops, the quintet players are standing on their heads. Oh well....

After that.... I harvested some cloth from some pants that were tripping me up. It's cloth from India using the ikat technique on the warp & weft of the weaving process. The result is that the checks are a bit fuzzy. The other colorful cloth happened [unconsciously] to be ikat from Indonesia. Squares & Stripes

Here's a detail, so maybe you can see the fuzzy edges of the weaves, especially on the black & white cloth.

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On my work wall for years I have has some scraps that were treasures. One was the very last remnant of a silk Italian scarf my mother had given me when I was a teenager. The others were just charming not-to-be-thrown-aways. Time to use them, said my inner voice, they've been ladies-in-waiting for long enough.

Special Treasures

details

I wrote on the back of this piece telling the treasures story.

And then, in the waste-not-want-not tradition, I cut up some cloth pieces on which I had written. As with the last quilt a few of the scraps had been on my work wall forever!

Writing Lines

It was delicious fun to leave the ruffly look at the top & bottom & not put a binding around the whole thing as I usually do. I wrote on the back of this quilt too, telling the story.

And finally for this post....

A zone that is very much in my old quilt-pattern-roots. The pattern in this case is called Tipsy Irish Chain. The blue & white cloth is from a tablecloth that I decided to harvest for my own work. It is from China & the patterns are made from a very old "stitch resist" technique, way more sophisticated than tie-dye. This photo is an in-process shot. The quilt top is not fully assembled.

Then I quilted it up & now...

I confess I as bit bothered by the wonkiness of the chains, but then I tell myself, & I believe, that wonkiness is what makes work lively & interesting. You can't just look at it & notice,"Oh, that's an Irish Chain" & move on to the next. It's more than that because of its irregularity!

Here's a detail showing the indigo-dyed cloth more clearly.

That's it for now.....

....Except people have been asking me about purchasing my pieces. I'm totally up for this, so in the last two posts if there is something you would like to have I will come up with a reasonable price for it.