Auditioning Ideas

My wanderlust got a bit of a reprieve as we traveled to the beach to spend our long holiday weekend with family.

Jack has his final exams this week which means it's busy for me too, including lots of volunteering at school to collect used books and work the prom. No, it's not Jack's prom...it's the senior prom...the underclass parents (Jack is a sophomore) are asked to work the prom for the seniors...I'm not a night person so we'll see how it goes.

In between life tasks, I have been trying to push forward in working on my shell piece.  And so I've been auditioning a few ideas before I commit to stitching them directly on my block.

I have a few mirrored-shell cabochons that I would like to use somehow so I tried a whipped spiderweb type stitch over 1/3 of the cabochon.  At first I tried a pale pink, but I really didn't like the flatness of just one color...

Next I tried a variegated thread (Vicki Clayton's hand-dyed silk twist) whose color closely matches one of my shells.  Unfortunately,  it turned out a little too stripey once it was stitched...

Now I'm going to try dyeing my own thread to see if I can get more realistic coloring. 

In addition to shelling, I've been playing with different ideas for stitching a nine-armed starfish.  At first I thought I might bead a three-dimensional starfish using tube peyote or regular peyote stitch.  

I changed that idea because I don't think I could find beads small enough to stitch all nine arms into the center. 

At this point, I'm going to try bead embroidery onto ultrasuede, appliqueing it onto the block with padding underneath...we'll have to see how that works out. 

If you sent me an email over the weekend, I'll try to get back to you in the next few days.  It's just a pretty busy week around here until school lets out.  

Happy Day everyone!

Traveling in Place

Lately I've been suffering from a severe case of wanderlust.

I just. want. to travel.

And I'm not picky.  It's everything I can do to not jump in the car and drive an hour or so and see where it takes me.  I'm ripe for adventure but can't go anywhere so I've been trying to accomplish it in small ways:  going to a grocery store I've never been to, taking a new way home...I don't really care what.

I'm not sure why it's such a strong feeling right now.  But here's the reality.  Jack has exams this week, he starts his first full-time job as a lifeguard for the Summer...and he needs me to drive him there.  Not to mention that there's not money in our budget for travel right now.

So...I've been looking for other creative ways of "getting away" without going anywhere.  That's when I discovered this post by Conde Nast Traveler...

The 69 Greatest Fiction Travel Books of All Time...hmm....

What's a Fiction Travel Book?  Here's how it's defined in the post:

It's a book in which a place is as important a character as the protagonist; it's a book so informed by the writer's culture that it's impossible to read it without uncovering the life of the author behind it; it's a book that has shaped the way we see a certain place; it's a book whose events and characters could be set nowhere else.

OK.  I think I could use this as a way of traveling without going anywhere.

Plus, I love to read and I read a lot.  Well actually, I don't "read" a lot, I listen a lot....to audiobooks... while I'm working and stitching and folding laundry, etc.

And, since I'm making so many decisions in my daily life, I don't really want to have to work too hard in selecting books.  That's why I love loooong, complex series.  I read one, love it...and immediately begin reading the next book.  Then when it's all over, I'm sad for a while until I find the next "series" to sink my teeth into...Over a month ago, I finished the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan and I've been floundering to find a new book path to follow.

Until today!

I can cure my wanderlust and my need for a book selection in one fell swoop!

I'm going to work my way through this list of traveling fiction starting with Cousin Bette by Honore de Balzac.  I've never read any of Balzac's work so I'm looking forward to immersing myself into early 19th century France.  Evidently, he is considered the founder of realism and European literature and influenced the works of  authors like Dickens, Flaubert, Dostoyevsky, and Henry James.

A few years back, I participated in an online reading challenge, the 1% Well-Read Challenge where you read one book every month off the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list.  I read some great books that year (you can check out the reviews I wrote here.)....one of them was Breakfast at Tiffany's and we all know what happened as a result of my reading that book.  Plus, I read books by foreign authors and period literature that I'm not sure I would have found on my own.

I think this new reading plan coupled with this book I re-discovered on my own book shelf...Weekends Away Without Leaving Home...

Just might get me somewhere.

Anyone want to join me?  I'd love to have traveling companions...

One Little Urchin

While shell seeking in Naples, Florida, Jim and I haven't found too many sea urchins.  

Just this one...

This guy had washed up on shore after a big thunderstorm, having lost all of his spines in the pummeling surf.

Normally, the purple sea urchin looks something like this...

Its skeleton covered in very sharp spines that cause a painful wound to the human who steps on one!

Once the sea urchin dies, all of its spines drop off and you are left with a beautiful, pale dotted skeleton underneath.   

In researching this little purple sea urchin, I learned that the urchins belong to the Phylum Echinodermata, which also includes sea stars and sand dollars.  Echinoderms have five-fold symmetry which isn't readily apparent in the sea urchin while it's alive and its skeleton is covered in spines.  

But once the spines fall away, you can see the symmetry very easily.   I was happy to discover this because it helped me to define an embroidery approach for creating my own little textile urchin.

I found the illustrations in this post at Bibliodyssey...a great site full of all kinds of wonderful photographs/illustrations. And Bonus!  Everything posted on the site is under a Creative Commons license which is great.  Thanks to Megan of Elmsley Rose for pointing it out to me. 

I used the divisions of the five-segments illustrated in the picture below to create an embroidery pattern of sorts...

I struggled a bit trying to decide how best to sculpt this little urchin.  Finally I decided to embroider a circle onto water-soluble fabric...

The water-soluble fabric does two things.  First it stabilizes the embroidery stitches by helping secure them more firmly to the fabric circle.  And secondly, the glue in the stabilizer gives the fabric circle some body which, I hoped, would help the globular, raised cloth of the urchin hold its shape...

While the stabilized, embroidered circle was still damp,  I stitched around the outside of the circle to draw it together in typical "yo-yo" fashion...

I then stuffed the inside with half of a felt bead to give that yo-yo some three-dimensionality.  I  cut out a center circle in the top and, using a stylus while the fabric was still damp, I scuplted the yo-yo into a round biscuit.

Then I let it sit to dry, the stabilizer helping the little urchin to hold its shape.

As I applique the little urchin to the block, I'm hoping that some of the folds from the yo-yo gathering will smooth out.  

I'm not quite ready to decide where to place it on the block or if I should need to make more...

So for now I'll just let him hang out with the guy I found on the beach.

See you next time.

Red Sea Whip

Reflections.

That's what I decided would be the subject that would tie all my crazy quilt journal blocks together, trying to incorporate mirrors into each one.

This shell block I'm working on now is all about the shell seeking that Jim and I do when we visit my father in Naples, Florida every year.

I'm attempting to convey the feelings of beauty and lightness that captivate us as we walk along at the water's edge and I hope to honor the treasures that we've collected there.

The subject of today's work is the Red Sea Whip.

Until this morning I thought it was a red sea fan.  That was until I did a little more research and discovered that it's most likely a long sea whip.  A sea whip is actually a soft coral from the gorgonian family, an animal not a plant, and has small tentacles that extend from polyps along the branches to capture plankton.

I've been lucky to find three red/purple sea whips in Naples.  The one in the first picture was sent to Marty Trahan because she loves them so.  Hi Marty!

That leaves me with two.  This big one I keep in my china closet...

And the smaller one below, I used as the pattern for the red sea whip I stitched onto my block today.  I photocopied the fan on my printer at 80% so it would fit on the block.  Traced it on tissue and transferred the design...

I went a bit overboard with that one variegated seam treatment over which I wanted to stitch the whip.  

It was kind of busy and I was afraid it would fight with the sea whip rather than recede behind it...so I added some of that metal mesh ribbon as a seaweed backdrop to calm the area a bit.  

I love crazy quilting for this reason...If you don't like something, you change it until you do...  

And here's what the entire block looks like at the end of today.

The next elements I have to figure out are a little more complex...interpreting a nine-armed sea star and a sea urchin that Jim found one day...

I haven't figured those out yet.  I better get out a doodle cloth.

See you next time shell friends.

Rainy Day and Seam Shells

It was a beautiful weekend here in Maryland.

Made better by exceptional weather, the fact that I had time to finish up the seam treatments on my shell block...and, as if that wasn't enough, an unexpected gift from my BNF (blogging needle friend), Shirlee Fassell.

An envelope containing vintage crochet shell trim from her stash and shell buttons she'd found at the Brimfield Antiques show...

I was thrilled! The package came in Saturday's mail and, before I'd even finished my lunch, I ripped out the old trim and inserted this new one. Perfection!

Lucky for all of us, Shirlee has a blog where she shares her embroidery talent. I've posted about her award-winning crazy quilt which I had the honor of photographing once...you can read that post here. And you can follow Shirlee's magical work with a Luneville hook on her blog here...She's been to Paris THREE times to study at Ecole Lesage and is returning in July for another lesson. Her work is exquisite.

As for me, I'm doing my best to get five more blocks completed for the Crazy Quilt Journal Project. I haven't gotten off to the best of starts given the fact that I've only completed one if the first four months!  Let's see, I finished January's block in Spring so if I finish this one before Fall, that will be an improvement.  

Ever the optimist, I believe I can still make six by August. It means lots of stitching between now and then but, with Jack working as a lifeguard this Summer, I hope to have a little more time to myself. 

Here's where the block stands today after Shirlee's gift...

Just some simple seams to start. I tend to layer embellishments as I go so I'd rather wait to add complexity to the seams.  Waiting ensures that I don't waste threads and beads on something that is going to get covered up.  Plus, it allows me to reserve color/texture/bead selections until the design is further along.  Next up is a red sea fan.

We're having one of those drenching Spring rains where the all the green glows in the gray light...Speaking of rain, did you see Allie's finished quilt, Rainy Spring...?  It captures that glowing-rainy-green-feeling beautifully...

Good Monday everyone!

Beach Grass

Happy week-end!

Radiolarians

It seems I can't get enough of couching around lace motifs to add to crazy quilt blocks...

I have been searching for shapes and forms that reflect the flora and fauna found on the beach to use as inspiration for the embellishment of this shell block.

This is the second block in a row where I cannot fall back on the use of flowers to decorate seams etc.

Even though I do miss the flowers, the challenge has been fun for me.  My search took me to the library where I found this book of illustrations by Ernst Haeckel, a German biologist and naturalist who lived and worked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

This guy contributed greatly to biology and plant physiology by discovering, identifying and naming thousands of species.  I had no idea.   I was just looking for some block inspiration...

Well, I found it.

Haeckel was also an illustrator and this book is full of his drawings of microscopic life forms, similar to the amoeba, called radiolarians.  Radiolarians are free-swimming protozoa that live in all of the earth's oceans.

And even though they are too tiny to see with the naked eye, their forms and structures seem to map some of the larger sea forms we can see in the ocean such as sea stars, urchins, etc.

I was infatuated and have been using it to inspire some of the seam treatments on my block.

I bought this hole-y trim a while back not knowing what I would use it for...

And today it came out of the box and into action.  It's called Spider Web Ribbon and you can find it at  Flights of Fancy boutique.  I think it remotely resembles the hole-y and spiky quality of some of the shapes on the beach.

Today, I'm trying to finish up the base seam treatments for the block so I should be able to share a full- block update next post.

See you then.

Shell-abration

The rain is pouring down outside and I'm inside reflecting on shells, sand and surf.

The Shell Reflections Collection Box has spilled all over the table.

And beads, shells, ribbons and threads have begun their conversation...

 

I suppose I am their translator...trying to capture their message with my needle...

While reflecting on our ritual of seeking, stooping and collecting shells.

It feels good to be underway.

Hope you all had a wonderful Mother's Day...

I loved this talk on TED "If I Should Have a Daughter...", a poetry performance by Sarah Key.  She's quite a talented young woman.  Enjoy.

Cool Little Spool Tool

Remember my framing needle friend, Terri, whom I mentioned in my last post and who framed my Breakfast at Tiffany's piece?

Well, while I was at Terri's, we had to re-lace a certain section of the piece.  Since Terri is a framer and an embroiderer, she tends to lace a LOT of needlework.

And she uses this nifty little spool holder that her Dad made to hold her lacing thread...

When lacing, I have always tried to guess the amount of thread I would need to lace a piece.  Then I would reel off an estimated amount, usually yards long.  I would cut the thread and then pull the entire length of the thread through the piece using big arm motions.  Often, the thread would end up a tangled mess or get caught up on something despite my best efforts.

Enter Terri's little spool holder.  Terri threads her needle and and begins lacing one side...when she reaches the other side, she ties off the thread and then goes back to tighten all the laces.  Then you can cut the thread...exactly where you need to and there's very little tangling of thread and gnashing of teeth.

I've laced a lot of pieces in my life and I had never learned this method. Soo...maybe there's someone else out there besides me who might be helped by Terri's method. 

 

Thanks to Terri and her Dad for the gift of my own lacing spool. I just used it today and it's a HUGE improvement over my old method.

Finished Traveling

A few months ago my local Embroiderers' Guild asked me to give a talk about the inspiration behind and the development of my Breakfast at Tiffany's-inspired embroidery, Traveling.

So yesterday, I put on my black dress and my mother's pearls, and headed off with my slideshow to share my story.  Most of my guild members are not online and do not read blogs so they had never heard the stories that I had shared here on this blog.

One of my guild members, Terri Tubergen, is also a framer.  Terri does excellent work and, when I asked her if she could line the edges of the shadow box with mirror, she didn't hesitate to say she would try.

So yesterday was my first chance to see the final framed piece...and I was thrilled!

I had wanted the piece to resemble the mirror-lined jewelry cases within the Tiffany store itself.

Remember I was worried that I needed to extend the piece with ribbon? And so I traveled to New York to find something?

It turns out, I ended up not using the ribbon I purchased anyway.  It placed the mirror too far away from the work so the mirror was unable to reflect the three-dimensionality of the embroidery like I had envisioned.

We decided to go for it and rest the mirror edges right at the seam allowance.  I was still a bit worried that the mirror sides might overshadow the piece inside.

I'm happy to report that this didn't happen at all.  In fact, the mirrors reflect light to the sides of the three-dimensional components as I had hoped they would.  

I love it!  And it's just too dag-on pretty not to share.

And poor Terri.  

I'm afraid there will be more mirror boxes in her future.  I'm thinking of framing January Reflections the same way.

Furthermore, it got me thinking...This approach would make a great glass table top with embroidery underneath. 

All in all, it sure feels good to have it all finish up so nicely.   And so much fun to share it all with my needle friends.

Happy day everyone!

Grace isn't dead yet...

I've missed being here.

My special project is complete and my life is returning to some semblance of normalcy.   I hate when I can't share what I'm working on whether it be for a gift or something else.  Oh well, they all eventually show up here even if it's not in real time.

Today I'm rushing off to return to Japanese embroidery instruction...

This piece is called Eternal Grace and the operative word for me is "Eternal"!!  I think I've resurrected this piece more times than is spiritually feasible.

It's never too late if you start today.

And so we meet again, Grace and I.

I started studying Japanese embroidery 20 years ago when I lived in Japan.  

I was the only gaijin (foreigner) in my class.

All the Japanese women brought their frames to class wrapped in furoshiki.

I didn't have one so they made one for me...

And so, I remember them fondly today while I fear I've forgotten much of the japanese embroidery that I once knew.

See you after class...