threadspider’s weblog

I have a bit of a game for you, if you have few idle moments. It’s in the manner of Where’s Wally or Waldo, as I think he is called across the Pond, or making pictures from clouds.

I have ordered fabric from the internet for my blue and white quilt and as with all things colour related, what looks perfect on screen is not even close in real life. I had ordered a bundle of fat eighths but they were quite the wrong blue for the project-definitely indigo and whilst being lovely, has a deadening effect on the quilt.

However amongst the fabrics was a patterned piece that intrigued me a great deal. It is a glorious design-a Hoffman, called “Kasuri”. I had been thinking about my first sewing pieces, following a thread on stitchin’ fingers and was trying to recall the details of a little felt elephant I made when I was a child. So with elephants on the brain, I spotted one on the fabric. Really.

It really helps to enlarge the picture above..but right in the centre there was an elephant. Here s/he is, with a 90 degree rotation, an ear added, sitting in a block of blue silk and edge with more Kasuri fabric.

I have found several faces and a crocodile so far. I’m looking for a mouse..or anything else that I can whimsically add to other blocks to make a story. Can you see anything? I would love to be able to incorporate other found imaginings into this story.

This is a bit of hand stitching whimsy whilst ideas for another silk quilt grow. I dyed a couple of bits of silk this morning to use with it, and I may use some of the hand stitches I am practising for the stitch along on it. I am exploring knots, and that has another thread spinning along in my mind, inspired by a wonderful and thoughtful piece I read here.

Just need a moment to share this….

and this…

and to say well done, youngest child. Proud doesn’t begin to do the feelings justice. I had some very sentimental moments over the last few days, having seen both of my fledglings soaring on their own wings, and can’t wait to see how the next stages of their lives develop.

And that visit to Cambridge for graduation day is one of the reasons why I have been absent from here recently. We have had weekend activities every weekend since the end of April and it has been the most tremendous fun, but the pace is cooling a little now. One last bash this weekend and then home for a while.

Any spare time I have spent tilling the soil, like the labourer I really am, but I have been enjoying reading about other people’s activities. I am thoroughly enjoying Dijanne Cevaal’s and Helen Cowan’s blogs at the moment , but my most recent discovery came via a note on Paula’s Beauty of life site to the lovely blog of Annette Emms. Annette teaches for the Embroiderers’ Guild and I am seriously thinking of joining one of the local branches of the EG, to try and impose a little discipline on my sewing.

I have realised that growing my own produce is a very time consuming affair, but as the autumn approaches, I should have more time to settle down into stitching again. I’m toying with the idea of studying for a City and Guilds certificate by post, also with the idea of forcing myself to become more disciplined. I need to give it a little more thought yet and be sure I can commit the time and effort to it.

You can probably hear me squealing all over the world. This gorgeous package arrived at my house this morning from lovely Paula in Brisbane. It’s such a long way away…but I am thrilled to be able to add this to my Porcelain quilt, of which more soon. Paula wrapped it with some lovely threads and made me a card too. I was so touched. Thank you. Thank you.Thank you!

I am frantically busy with family visits and digging potatoes. And number two child’s graduation is coming up Thursday. No time to sew but some thinking and planning going on. The days are very long and the darkness hours few-so I am enjoying every moment of summer-to last me through those horrible days from November through to January. Which I hope will be filled with stitching.

Back soon.

Last weekend I was finally able to give my lovely child her birthday quilt-and as I hoped, she loved it. She has been following the progress on the blog, but like you, had not seen the whole thing. Until last Saturday. I took a picture before I wrapped it up…

…and thus it began its journey. Finished with me and moved on, with love. An ending and a beginning.

Today I worked on the birch quilt. Started back in the winter, the colours are wintry. I keep being struck how the colours I want to work with changes through the year. The binding went on today and it stopped being a work unfinished on the wall and started to become a quilt. With an independent existence. It is very tactile-there is velvet and silk in it. It captures the feel of winter trees.

Now I need to go back to the poem that partly inspired it and see if more needs doing. It might not. It is finished. But it might be just beginning.

I think my tail has been caught..the garden chores are all done and the rain has arrived to keep everything moving along. This weekend we visit Cambridge to deliver the long promised Red Quilt to the May birthday girl. And after I finished the label today, i started thinking about the next project. There is till the Birch quilt to complete, and the Porcelain quilt is a “slow cloth”, but I intend it to be so.

I have been mulling over some ideas for a time about what comes next, and feel as if I am being carried in a warm current of exquisite ideas and images at the moment. I am constantly inspired by Jude’s work at Spirit Cloth-the colours, the skill, the ingenuity and innovation of the elements she works with. Every post is a surprise and a delight. And I have become a regular reader of Karen’s blog and love the purity of her work. I seem to being pulled back towards some hand stitching. I joined the hand embroidery group at Stichin’ fingers and I am going to work with the stitch along.

I have been pondering this month’s TIF challenge too-The stories that are and the stories that are possible-and I think what I have in mind will fit in with that.

Just a few weeks ago I was talking to my friend VP about why we both felt we were “Jacks of All Trades.” We came to no very firm conclusions, except to accept we were. (We blamed our school!) I am going to begin an autobiographical piece-the story that is-and use the scroll format Sharon posted about on her blog yesterday. That way I will be able to add elements as I can and as I want to, and include not only the different stitches for the Stitch Along, but a variety of techniques that a Jack (should it be Jill?) of all trades might employ. Ones I know and ones still to learn-the story that is possible.