First Anniversary Musings

I realized recently that my first anniversary as a blogger came and went without me noticing. As well as blogging myself, I have been reading more blogs this year, as I discovered the wonderful online community of textile lovers. I have a bit of time to reflect on this past year and I thought I'd share my thoughts on how it has gone.



My original reason for starting a blog was to participate in the Take a Stitch Tuesday Challenge set up by Sharon B. I can't tell you how much I am humbled by her energy, expertise and artistic talent. While I haven't finished all the weeks (I've reached 47 although I haven't blogged it yet), I have been pushed into many new things by the challenge and I will be eternally grateful to Sharon for setting it up.


Once I started participating in Sharon's challenge, I realized that there were many, many textile blogs out there. I can't tell you how many hours I've spent looking at all the wonderful things everyone out there is doing. I've added many inspired ideas to my visual journal thanks to my blog surfing.


At that point, I was working a couple of consulting jobs from home, but in March, I was able to start working more outside the home. Many years ago I 'retired' from full time work as a library director to stay home with my children. While I was able to fit in part-time work back in NY, when we moved there weren't enough hours between my morning drop-off and afternoon pick-up times. With the change in grades I have a good stretch of time to get out now. It was great to get back into a library and work at a busy reference desk. I forgot how much I love a university atmosphere. Of course, it means less time for stitching and blogging but I usually do feel more energized and creative after a good day at work.



I have summers off for childcare, so I was able to catch up and try new things then. I wrote an article about the tapestry project I worked on with my daughter's art club (see the Dec. NeedleArts magazine). My biggest inspiration was going up to Plimoth Planation in MA to work on the reproduction jacket project. That has totally changed the direction I want to go with my embroidery.


I started back at the university again in September where I'm doing some things that I find professionally exciting (I know, you are wondering what is exciting about being a librarian, but really, it is fun) I was also asked to be on the EGA National Youth Program Committee and edit the Crayons to Threads column for NeedleArts. That was a great honour (plus I still do the chapter newsletter). And the Sampler Round Robin I am in seems to be moving again. At least I have finished one and have another to do, so that is good.


My blogging has been sporadic. I constantly question why I'm doing it and why anyone would care. But I am so inspired by others, maybe somebody will find what I do interesting as well. And since not many people blog stumpwork, I feel I need to keep going with that, just to encourage more people.


All in all, I am pleased with what I have accomplished in the last year. Especially since I have also been working at the barn one or two evenings a week for much of the year. I even took riding lessons for a while. Mind you, I can't be to complacent right now because the tree is only half decorated and there are still presents to buy.

I am looking forward to 2008. There are going to be some new work challenges, some column editing, and lots and lots of stitching. And I hope to do some work with the high school art guild in the coming year as well. I don't know if I'll participate in any more challenges though. I think I want to challenge myself to create the work that I've been planning since I first saw the 3-D embroidered gardens book. I'll keep you posted on that. I also want to explore some other ideas. Today Sharon b wrote about a new blog that has captured my interest, Red Thread Studio. Elaine Lipson writes about Slow Cloth, New Cloth and Art Cloth. I love doing hand sewing, so the idea of slow cloth really appeals to me. (One of my favourite places is the milliner's shop in Colonial Williamsburg) Elaine's third post mentions one of my favourite books Elizabeth Wayland Barber's Women's Work, The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth and Society in Early Times. There is a vague notion in my mind that somehow the ideas in Barber's book should combine with those in Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species by Sarah Hrdy to form an interesting take on why women feel and act as they do. I'm not sure what yet, but one day it will hit me.

I'm sure I've gone on long enough now, but I've at least interspersed my meanderings with some photos of current projects, and to end it all, some silk that I will be using to knit myself a lace scarf. If nothing else, over the last year I've learned that I can make something really special for myself, not just everyone else.

TAST 29 Arrowhead stitch and finished Dragon CQ pillow

I've had stitching time but not blogging time the last couple of weeks, but I finally have a chance to sit and write. I'm very excited because this morning I sent off an article and some photos on the VA tapestry project I did this year with my daughter's art club. It will be in the December issue of the EGA magazine, NeedleArts. That has been one of the things keeping me busy.

On the TAST front, I was so taken with some of the multiple arrowhead rows in Sharon's samples, I decided to use that stitch on my last Dragon CQ pillow seam. First, since I've learned how important testing is, I tried some arrowheads on a counted thread doodlecloth to get a feeling for even arrowheads. I decided I liked the triple blue one best, with all the arrowheads in the row starting from the same seam. By the way, the green mess represents Sting singing a John Dowland song on the album Songs from the Labyrinth. It is a contrapuntal sort of round and it was going through my head. I don't think I'm ready to illustrate Fantasia style yet.


So, after the practice I came up with this seam. This was the third try at the bugle bead row. The first time, I didn't have enough to do the whole row so I took it out and tried using some coloured half bugles I had lying around for every other arrowhead. It looked horrible so I took it out again and waited until I could get out and buy a new tube of beads. I'm very glad I did because I'm happy with this seam.

And here is the final pillow. My first CQ project is done! As well as having help from Sharon's TAST challenges, I had help and encouragement from ktj in pa who sent me patterns and encouraged me to try crazy quilting.

TAST 22 Satin Stitch

I use satin stitch heavily in many of the pieces I've been working on lately, especially stumpwork. But since I slacked off last week by using what I had been working on, I thought I'd do something just for TAST this week. The inspiration for this was a fill stitch gone bad, done by somebody else, and while it didn't work for that piece, I thought it would be perfect for this. The leaves and flowers are also satin stitch.

Since I've mentioned recent projects with satin stitch, here they are. These two are petals and leaves for a wild rose stumpwork project. I'm planning a special finish for these so I'll post more photos soon.

This is the tail of a dragon I'm putting in the center of a CQ pillow for my daughter. I started the dragon back in February with the tail and discovered I needed more floss but I could no longer find the DMC colour variations I had started with. They had stopped making the all dark blue and now only had a dark blue with purple. So I blended it in by adding some purple to the tail and then getting on with the rest. So far I am happy and so is my daughter. She likes the scale effect of the chain stitch in the body. I love the way the satin stitch reflects differently with the different directions.

Finally, here is the Virginia tapestry project finished and framed. Most of the motifs were made with stain stitch because that was the easiest filler for the designs the kids drew. Some, like my daughter, thought about the direction of the fur or petal growth while stitching, others went higglety-pigglety but they still look good. This was displayed at a county festival today and well received by those who saw it. It looks like a local museum wants it for the summer, but afterwards the principal wants to keep it at the school - she even paid for the framing!

Inspiration and Creativity

I have so much to think about this week that my brain is racing faster than I can really think - and it's not just the tea and coffee I've been drinking all day. Rather, it is all the interesting and inspiring blogs I've been reading. Add to that the new things I've been reading up on for work, and well, you have one busy brain.


To start with, I've noticed that since I started my out-of-the-house part time job I've had alot more mental energy. I've had to read up on lots of new technology and start using it as well (Sharon B's Mindscape blog has been helpful for this). And I've had lots more face-to-face interactions as well, which has been nice. Despite lots of professional reading, I'm actually feeling more creative.


So then Sunday I see the most amazing piece of stumpwork imaginable. It is a large alphabet sampler by Donna at By the Bay Needleart. First she teases us with a few shots for Mother's Day. But after I wrote wanting to see more, she posted a photo of the whole piece. Donna has been working on it for a year and as well as the inspiration of seeing the beauty of her piece, I am inspired by the time she has taken. I mentioned it to a couple of members of my EGA group last night and they said they had pieces that have taken longer - in rotation with others. I have often slipped small pieces in with a larger piece, but my one big piece was not rotated with much of anything. I've been thinking of doing another big project but I felt I didn't have the time, but I realize now that maybe I just need to be willing to rotate and not set a deadline or deny myself different things while getting one thing done.


Elisabeth at Sew in Love had this problem a while back with her dog needlepainting and I voted for the finish is and get it over with plan, although she decided on the rotate it with other things plan. And now I'm thinking that maybe I was wrong.


Which leads me to one of the gapingvoid tips: Don't worry about finding inspiration. It comes eventually. If I worry too much about when to do something, I won't be ready for inspiration.


Sharon B, crediting Serena of Layers of meaning , pointed us to this wonderful list of tips from 2004 (before I was blogging). I like Sharon's choices, but I also enjoyed reading Sarah E's list because I too have times when I want to ignore everybody.


I think, given my own experience, my favourite one is: You are responsible for your own experience. There have been times in my life where I just did what had to be done because it seemed so overwhelming to take care of everyday life. I started to make time for needlework and then my husband gave me a classical guitar which brough music back into my life and it was funny how I was able to do those things and still take care of everything else. I can't say the cleaning suffered because I was never really cleaning all that much, so I'm not sure where the time came from. And of course now I feel better as well.


Just to give you an idea of where the inspiration and creativity can all lead, here is my crazy idea for this year (last year it was having every child at the elementary school plant a plant for Earth Day - it worked, but was exhausting). This is a map commemorating Jamestown's 400th anniversary. It was inspired by Catherine Jordan's Jamestown map and the EGA National Tapestry I saw at the National Seminar in October . The version done by my daughter's art club has a painted map with embroidered motifs designed by the kids (done on muslin and then stitched onto the map) and satin stitch lettering. Very little work has been done by the adults (the art teacher, my EGA chapter president Wendy who has been helping, and me).

Another stitcher in the family

While I work on my buttonhole TAST I thought you would like to see the work of another family artist. My daughter loves dragons and named her Guinea pig after Ramoth the gold dragon in Anne McCaffrey's Pern series. So the Christmas stocking for the Guinea pig has a dragon on it. She designed it by drawing the design on some muslin and then embroidered it with various cotton flosses. I sewed it up and added the name and bow border on the sewing machine.

The same technique is being used on a tapestry we are making with her art club at school. The art club teacher was very receptive to my idea for a state map with various embroidered motifs done by the club. The kids have drawn plants, animals, boats, etc. and will embroider them on muslin which will then be appliqued onto the main map. The main map will be painted on cloth with embroidered outlines. This kids will paint in mountains, water, etc. The final 'tapestry' will hang in the school. I was inspired by the EGA National Tapestry I saw at the National Seminar in October and the wonderful maps being done by Catherine Jordan. Catherine is part of my EGA chapter and graciously came to the art club to teach fabric painting. The kids loved it.