One more, one more

You may recall the placket cloth bag I made last year. If not, you can take a quick peek at this index entry to refresh your memory ...

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/search/label/Placket%20cloth

[Note: you'll need to scroll down a bit as the "placket cloth" posts will include this one]

This is what the placket cloth has become, front ...

and back ...

It was the undoing of the old ...

that enabled the remaking of the new ...

So now I have retired my commercially made stitch bag and will use this one instead. Don is already shaking his head imagining what I will look like when I carry both bags at the same time ...

Highly visible, I'd say ...

Feeling more like myself

I am grateful to India Flint for the insights I received during her bagstories project. And I will honor her request not to divulge the construction techniques provided in her private Facebook workshop.

That said, I do want to share part of the journey that led to the creation of this bag ...

As you can see, it is somewhat larger than the bag on the right, which was constructed following India's original instructions ...

But those of you who have been reading this blog for a while will most likely recognize its roots in the Remember 2016 cloth, which utilized Jude Hill's paperless piecing technique ...

Indeed, the first patches in this new bag were trial bits from Remember 2016. Others were remains of last year's Peace Pin Project. And some were made from cloth gifted by Kindred Spirits. Most are linen, either thrift store bought or vintage clothing and linens from my past.

There were even several abandoned slow stitch projects pulled out and finally put to good use ...

Speaking of which ... I recently went through my scraps, discarding many that were too small and/or too shredded to be of much use. But in going through the myriad bits and pieces, I realized that I recognized each one ... where it came from and what project it was used in. The memories that were triggered astonished me. 

So it is that this bag has become a holder of memory. Point to any patch and I dare say I can spin a story (or two or three). In the days to come, I may do just that. But for now, I will rest in the satisfaction of its wholeness and in sharing that here.

Addendum:

First Golden Eye ...

Agarita ...

and Bitterweed ...

Bagstories continued

India Flint's Facebook-based bagstories class did result in a functional bag in addition to the funky teabag bag featured in earlier posts ...

It presented a great opportunity to use some eco-dyed muslin from a couple of years ago which was inspired by India Flint's Bundle Book, using a process detailed in this post.  I tore the dyed muslin into strips and paper-less pieced it (thanks Jude) into 2.75" squares ...

Onion skin eco-dye

which I stitched together, back-to-back ...

Thimble flower eco-dye

Then stitched the squares together along the inside edges and realized I needed to reinforce the seams. Which gave me the perfect excuse for using Deb Lacativa's "Dirty Threads" ...

 

I also dove into a collection of vintage buttons looking for a closure. I have no idea if this is shell or celluloid, but it seemed to fit ...

And lucky me ... since there were lots of scraps leftover, I got to piece them together into a handle ...

I'm realizing that paper-less piecing gives me such great pleasure ... thanks again Jude.

Tea time

Here's my first go at making something out of tea bags ...

I'm really not at all sure what to call it, nor do I have any sense of what to do with it ...

except maybe just leave it where the light can shine through ...

And don't you just love Deb Lacativa's Dirty Threads?

Tea bag

India Flint has just published a new book entitled bagstories and is running an online class on Facebook. Never one to do things exactly as detailed, I decided to try making my bag out of used tea bags, with the following result (so far) ...

I'm not accustomed to working dimensionally, so while I was very comfortable stitching the first part of the project, here shown inside ...

and out ...

I really have no earthly idea where it's headed next.

By the way, the stitching was done with Deb Lacativa's "Dirty Threads." I was delighted to read in her post today 

http://morewgalo.blogspot.com/2018/02/dirty-threads.html

that she plans to be dyeing more in the Spring!

On the eve of the lunar eclipse

I woke at five this morning, as I often do, to find moonlight streaming in our west bedroom window. Putting on my glasses, I found the almost-full moon too bright to look at directly.

Tomorrow will be different. As I write this, the sun is chasing the moon westward to Australia, where the earth will step between the two, thereby creating a shadowmoon that will dance its way around the world.

So my thoughts are much with the kindred spirits down under, where the summer sun reigns and the shadowmoon will be at its fullest. 

Mo, who so faithfully records the full moon on her blog

https://itscrowtime.wordpress.com/?s=%22Full+moon%22&submit=Search

Barry, whose peace gifts 

http://rustnstuff.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-circle-of-peace.html

are such a wonder ...

Fiona, one of whose letterpress postcards

https://paperponderings.blogspot.com/2017/12/postcards-and-peace.html

has flown here ...

to join with other paper treasures from her hand ...

And because I didn't want to mar the postcard with my less-than-satisfactory machine stitching, I opted to slow stitch this time ...

to much better effect methinks ...

And then there's India Flint, 

http://prophet-of-bloom.blogspot.com/2018/01/at-high-noon-on-february-one.html

who was a major inspiration in my eco-dye trials, some of which were more ...

or less successful ...

but which play quite nicely together ...

and will join these tea bag squares as I participate her upcoming online bagstories project ...

There's more, but I will keep silent for now except to note this sign just appeared next door ...

- Mountains or beach?

Retrospective (7/22/2016)

Patch #201 Tuna Tower

Original Post

My belated patch for July 8th is a play on Don's assemblage Beach or Mountains, which I first wrote about two years ago (http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2014/06/good-very-eye-imho.html?m=1). 

I've turned it around to ...

One way or the other, this question has been asked of boyfriends, and then of potential spouses for our daughters. For many years, the "correct" answer was "beach." However, once we moved to the Texas Hill Country (1000 feet closer to heaven), the answer changed to "yes" because we've come to love both (okay, Don's always loved the mountains, but now I've learned to love the land, too).

Around the same time as Don was making his Beach or Mountains assemblage ...

I was embarking on Jude Hill's Considering Weave. There I met an amazing group of Kindred Spirits who inspire me to this day. Mo at It's Crow Time was working on an illustration of Old Man Crow's music that included a lock and key. So I sent her a bit of rusted cloth, much like this one ...

made while rusting the key for Don's assemblage ...

She in turn used that bit of rusted cloth in The Key Book last year (https://itscrowtime.wordpress.com/2015/05/18/the-key-book/).

Perfect, I thought, I'll use my bit of cloth for a Remember patch (at last). Except ... there was the comment Mo made about how tricky it can be to stitch on rust ... and the size wasn't quite right for the Remember 2016 patches.

So I drew a new, smaller key, colored it with Inktense pencils, carefully lettered the words with a Pitt pen, and stitched a single strand of floss around the edges.

Oh, and there's this ... when I made the Inktense tulip yesterday, some color bled. Not a lot, but not intended. Today, I took advantage of that tendency, letting the colors bleed, as they did in the original rust cloth. And truly, the Inktense was much easier to stitch through than rust.

So, Patch #190 Mountains or Beach? has found its way to the original July 8th post.

As for today, I'm wondering how I might remember this ...

exceptional tuna sashimi at A-Tan Bistro in San Marcos, Texas. Gotta love it ... and the colors!

Addendum: The Key Book by Mo was gifted to me in late 2017 ...  words fail me
http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2017/11/letting-go-of-dream.html

- Taking off a week

Sometimes I feel like the rabbit in Disney's Alice in Wonderland ...

Patch #67 Reverse Applique

Which is to say, once again, "I'm late, I'm late, I'm late." So (finally) here's a peek at (all) the wooden houses Don made as I see them from my stitching chair ...

the windows of which inspired today's patch.

Also belated is the subject of today's post title, which usually gets posted on Saturday ...

but this time I re-did last week's weather patches after realizing the split sunshine/cloud patches just weren't working for me. The week I took off is at the bottom of the picture (I know, bad pun).

Last, and finally done after thinking about it for four months, is a dye patch sampler from Maura Ambrose's workshop in November. Here making split patches of alum mordant and alum+tannin mordanted cloth worked just fine ...

Thankfully, the silk row proved less trouble than I anticipated as I realized I could baste each slippery piece to a piece of fine linen to stabilize it. You can see it best from the back ...

where the linen-lined silk patches are on the far left

- Sketchy

Dana at Raven and Sparrow wrote a great post about words and I have to agree that finding the perfect word is a kick. So today's post-word is "sketchy" ... see if you think it fits.

First, today's patch ...

Patch #13 Silk stitch on linen

which was cut from a piece of scrap linen used to try out some ideas ...

prior to stitching them into this sampler (I used to plan things out more often in the past ... now I'm more into freestitching). The lighthouse that ended up on the patch is Montauk light, which Don and I visited on the last day of our honeymoon on January 2nd in 1978. It sounds romantic to say we honeymooned in the Hamptons, until you realize there was a reason our room only cost $24.95 a night. "Freezing cold" doesn't begin to cover it, as any Long Islander can tell you about standing on the edge of the Atlantic in the middle of winter.

I did take a picture of the b-side ...

prior to backing it with some very fine handkerchief material for stability ...

Then I cut the 1 3/4" patch shown at the beginning of the post. I must say I like it enough to plan on adding some other stitch sample patches as this project unfolds.

Meantime, I have one last piece to share from the dyeing workshop.  After dip dyeing two linen blouses in Brazilwood and madder  ...

Note: both blouses started out white,
but had been dyed with Prairie Tea prior to the workshop

I got home from the workshop only to realize I had neglected to dip either of them in cochineal. Deciding to work further on one of the blouses to remedy the situation, I took a stone taken as a souvenir from Maura's property ...

tied it into one corner of the blouse ...

then dipped it in water hoping to pull some rusty red as a base for the cochineal ...

Even after 24 hours of soaking and drying it didn't work well enough to even bother photographing the result. Undeterred, I continued to the next step: wadded up the unwashed cochineal sample I had brought home (knowing it would release excess dye when wet), wrapped it into the same corner of the blouse, dipped it in water, and gave a good hard squeeze before hanging it up to drip dry ...

That worked out much, much better ...

But as with much natural dyeing, the long term results after laundering and drying tend to be far less dramatic ...

Which isn't really a problem. The way I see it, this blouse is a work in progress simply waiting for the opportunity to be dipped into the next experimental dye pot.