Raven and Sparrow

All done

The quilt block I have been making to contribute to Dee Mallon's Hearts for Charleston project is complete. I have been second guessing myself for a week, tearing out some stuff and adding others, but now I am to the point of not knowing what else to do, so I am calling it done. The red basting near the edges denotes a ten inch square, but I have left an inch and a half on each side to accomodate possible adjustments. Not that I would ever need such leeway...(ha ha I would need that and more!) The edges of this linen square tended to curl the longer I held it and embroidered it, so I stabilized the far outer boundaries with machine stitch. 

The back is a little chaotic, but not too bad. I usually weave my thread ends back into my embroidery, but this multi-layer embroidery didn't lend itself to that so there are knots. It just is what it is. I wish Dee well as she attempts to incorporate eight "other" pieces into her work. I hope this one won't be too hard to place.

I am grateful for the chance the Hearts for Charleston project gave me to express my deep and abiding sadness for the murders in Charleston and the stubborn, systemically entrenched hatred from which they sprang. Only when our hearts open to the intrinsic worth of every being can the long shadow of slavery and racism in America be softened. So often when atrocities occur it seems like there is nothing ordinary people can do, but this time for me there was, thanks to Dee's energy and strong sense of justice. Thank you, with all my heart. 

Houseplants on holiday

Usually the Pacific Northwest is cloudy well into July, but this year has been very dry and mostly clear. It has been a long time since my houseplants have been able to go out into the rain, which they love. (I think a summer rain is like a spa for them.) When I heard it clattering against the roof this morning I rushed my poor dusty green things outside for a shower and a full dose of light. I know they will thank me.

Looking at them all together surprises me. I didn't know I had so many. It reminds me of the seventies, when I was newly married and living with Mike in our first apartment. Up till then african violets were the only houseplants I knew about, but suddenly indoor plants were all the rage and a little store (not a nursery, just a little storefront on a busy street that stocked plants and the pots to put them in....very novel) opened two doors down from where I worked. The tiny terrarium sized specimens were less than a dollar apiece, so even as a poverty stricken student I could always afford to pick up a new variety. Unfortunately our apartment, though wonderful, was on the dark side, so many of my new pets wilted quickly. My thumb is not really green, but there was something in me thirsting for plant life. I wondered how we had done without them for so long.

Since that time, although they have gone in and out of fashion, I've always had some plants in my house. A couple of other dark living quarters taught me which ones could survive in low light, and, I must admit, low attention levels a lot of the time. When we moved into our first house I found a ficus nitida in the hardware store that was about six feet tall for only ten dollars. That tree was with us for almost twenty years, growing well over ten feet tall. It only succumbed when we moved here into the old summer house with its single pane windows and zero heat retention. Ficus plants hate to be cold, and so it died. It felt like losing a member of the family. I wish it could have hung on long enough to enjoy our new house, with its serious insulation and plentiful light. We even have ceilings tall enough for it now. The good conditions here have encouraged me to buy more and more plants, and branch out a little, although I still cling mostly to the workhorses that I know will be tough and forgiving. In payment for their loyalty it pleases me to be able to send them to the spa.

Laying down a base

It has taken a little while, but the base for my Hearts for Charleston quilt block has been basted and then heavily stitched. It has settled nicely into one whole, instead of a conglomeration of pieces. It is still much larger than the 10 inch piece requested, but all of the design falls within a 10 inch square.

It is still pretty regimented at this stage, but I have been thinking of it as background.

Here is the direction I plan to take it now. 

Three hundred things to say

This is my three hundredth post. A milestone, I guess, but not really too impressive, given the number of years that it has taken. Blogs have been on my mind though, started (as so many trains of thought are) by one of Jude's questions: "Is blogging dead?"

I've been plopping along here since 2007, and although there were a couple of years where posts were almost nonexistent, I could never bring myself to let it go. When I started there weren't so many blogs. I was on dial-up at that time and it took too long to do any more than minimal writing and picture uploads. I didn't tell anyone I knew that I was doing it and wondered if anyone would ever read what I wrote. Not too many did, but by commenting on other people's blogs I got responses and came to know  some people I would never have otherwise met. It was like a door forming out of nothing, just barely open, but promising a whole world. I watched people come and go, and found that the door could close suddenly and without recourse. I noticed that even though the internet became more and more of a cacaphony, authenticity mattered a great deal. The blogs and sites that have lasted on my list are true to their writers. Many blogs did not hold my interest because the people behind them didn't share enough of themselves to compensate for only being cyber-shadows. One of the things I like best about blogs is that they can cut through a lot of conventional getting-to-know you blather and engender important conversations, but they can also hide or distort to the point of being mere facade, and that just isn't worth it. Also, the trend toward commercialization has had a very dulling effect.

On the other side, as blog writer I found out how hard it is to be consistently interesting and authentic. Keeping up a sparkling level of discourse is too high a bar for me most of the time. Fortunately, through Jude's blog and on-line forums I have found a group of kindred fiber enthusiasts who read my stuff and graciously forgive it when its boring. In Grace's latest post she talks about her computer malfunction and how isolated it made her feel. I would feel the same way, not because I don't have wonderful friends in material life, but because the cyber-door has opened far enough to permit real connections through the internet that I would hate to lose. I find I blog these days as a way to maintain the opening and keep up my end of our relationship.

So even after all these years, blogging is obviously not dead for me. I have never twittered and Facebook is too brief and facile for the kind of connection that keeps me here. Maybe if I was hoping for commercial pay-off I would feel differently. I love getting comments (no one has ever been mean on my blog) and new readers, but as I watch the internet metamorphose, the rush for likes and clicks and retweets seems mostly like evidence of massive insecurity than something real. What I have found through blogs feels real to me and that's what keeps me going. Thanks everybody.

Weaving hearts

I've finally got my pieces woven together for the Hearts for Charleston block base. Getting everything sort of square and workable in ten inches was harder than I thought it would be. I was feeling all iffy about my fabrics, but now that I've got them together, they are going to have to do. I thought I had everything worked out for nine strips in both directions, but when I put the fabric down, the strips were way too wide. (When did I get so terrible at measuring and figuring?) After making thinner strips I got ten in one direction and nine in the other, and I am going with that. I had the words "open our hearts" on light and dark fabric, but the indigo ate the wax a lot more on the dark and the embroidery I used to bring them out was clumsy. However, when I tried both of them in the weaving, the dark strip had more life than the light one, so that's the winner anyway. I was going to weave the heart strip in, but then I thought it would be good to have nine hearts, so the piece will have to go on top. This is so different from my usual processes that I am proceeding slowly, but I think it is good for me to try something different. I have noticed that my weaving is much less free than Dee's or Mo's, but like I said...it will have to do. Now, basting.

Hearts for Charleston

I have never been an activist or even a group joiner, much, but I have admired Dee Mallon's sense of social justice for a while and her plan to make a quilt in honor of the shooting victims in Charleston struck a chord. Somewhat to my own surprise I volunteered to make a block.

She asked for a heart theme on a background of woven indigo strips a la Jude Hill. I know from reading Jude's blog that thinner fabrics work better for the kind of layering I envision, but I usually work with heavier stuff, so I don't have much of a stash to to draw from. I pawed through my fabrics looking for the cotton lawn I sometimes use to back my table runners. No lawn came forth, but I did find a very fine old linen curtain that I thought would work. I waxed the phrase "open our hearts" on it, with a line of hearts down the beautifully rendered little seam on the curtain. Then I did quick rubber band shibori to introduce some movement in the color and dipped it in indigo, half to a medium value and half much darker. The shibori didn't turn out to be hugely interesting and I think my woven background is going to be dull, but I'm not sure what to add right now. I'm going to make the weaving with what I have and see what occurs to me when I see it together.