Tea with Mrs. Lincoln

My Dear Sister,

I am sorry this letter reaches you so late as I know you are eager to hear about my visit with Mrs. Lincoln and to inform you of the manners and behaviors of the troops that lay to the right and left of us in the open field. Mrs. Lincoln was finely dressed, even down to her fingertips which were gloved to protect her delicate skin from the sun, as that is the fashion of our time. 

She shared with us the health of her sons and her concerns about her dear husband's disposition to this "Dreadful War." Such is the humor of this Lady that she regaled us with such stories of her courtship by Mr. Lincoln and their courtship cake but for which she never did give us the recipe. I'm told the recipe is from France and the cake is made of almond flour. 

There were other Ladies of similar rank and position including, Miss. Nancy. She came down from Iowa and was so generous in her explanation of the buttons we use to adorn our dresses, waist-coats and the cost of items such as these, that I will be forever grateful for that learned Lady's discourse. Miss. Minor was in attendance as well and spoke at great length of the Woman Suffrage Association. Also, there was a woman at table with us who wore a marvelously wrought chatelaine around her ample waist.
The small wicker basket holds her thimble, the locket contains a lock of her husband's hair, a pair of scissors and a shell snuff box. Quite often she is overcome by the vapors and is in need of her snuff to revive her. The sound of the troops readying for battle had more than just a few of us reaching for our snuff boxes but it brought our minds back to our purpose - rolling bandages. I must admit I was not very good and required the assistance of none other than Mrs. Lincoln herself...

I will write again soon with details of the troops and their conditions.

Your loving Sister, Susan.

We've Moved to Missouri!

"I'll give you this to take with you:

Nothing remains as it was. 

If you know this, you can begin again, 

with pure joy in the uprooting."

Judith Minty, Letters To My Daughters

No "uprooting" is without planning, work, difficulty or packing. Since my last post, Rob and I, along with our two big, beautiful, boy cats, packed up, sold our home in Plantation Florida and moved to the university town of Kirksville, in rural northeast Missouri. The move was neither easy nor painless - I don't imagine moving ever is.

When we arrived at our new home, the temperature was in the teens and I had a roaring migraine. It took about six weeks to unpack all the boxes at which time winter had arrived in her gleaming cloak of sparkling white.

I love my new home. It sits on the edge of the woods. My backyard is filled with birds, deer, raccoons and squirrels. The nights are dark and the sky is ablaze with stars, shimmering like white diamonds on black velvet. It is also quiet. When the snow lays heavy on the ground, it is almost silent, except for the calling of the owls. This morning I thought I heard coyotes howling.

I think of Plantation but have no regrets about leaving. The studio is organized and slowly getting up to speed. The boys, a/k/a the cats, love to bask in the sunlight pouring into the studio from the southern and western facing windows, as you can see here.

I joined the local quilt guild...Hands of Friendship Quilt Guild - what a talented and welcoming group of ladies. During these long winter days, I spend my time reading, researching and designing in my warm, sunlit studio. 

I'm loving this slower, gentler pace of living and I promise to post more often as I travel this new path, in this new state, in this new town and in my new home. 

If you would like to leave a comment and I hope you do, please click on the post title, We've Moved to Missouri and the Comment dialogue box will open.  Thank you and Enjoy!

Pink Bat of Happiness - June CQJP 2014

"A picture of a bat (fu 蝠) can be a visual pun for "good fortune" or happiness (fu 福) because both characters are pronounced fu. Often the bat is shown flying upside down because the character (dao 倒) for "upside-down" and the character (dao 到) meaning "to have arrived" are both pronounced dao.  Therefore, if a person were to say "the bat is flying upside down" a listener could just as easily hear this as "happiness has arrived" which, of course, has a very auspicious connotation."  Here you can see my stylized pink bat of happiness flying upside down into this recently completed block. 

The symbol of the upside down flying bat is found on doorways during the Chinese New Year festival. I used DMC's rayon thread to embroider the bat...that brought me no happiness.  I watered, waxed and fought with that thread every inch of the way.  The thread has a lovely sheen but really, no thread should be that difficult to work with. The Pekinese stitch was used to outline the bat's wings.

 DMC's satin thread was used for the "auspicious clouds" drifting across the face of the moon.

If you would like to leave a comment and I hope you do, please click on the post title, Pink Bat of Happiness - June CQJP 2014 and the Comment dialogue box will open.  Thank you and Enjoy!

Migraines Are A Pain

Migraines are a real pain.  This last one kicked my ass twelve ways to Sunday.  I'm back in the Studio and trying to play catch-up. Here are a few photos of the block I started before the migraine takeover.

 I transferred the tree to the weaver cloth and chose the threads.

 The tree is done now.

I need to get started with embellishing the seams.  Thank you for being patient and checking in.

If you would like to leave a comment and I hope you do, please click on the post title, Migraines Are A Pain and the Comment dialogue box will open.  Thank you and Enjoy!

Garden Stroll - May CQJP2014

My dad would often stroll through the garden fussing with this or that potted plant, adjusting his orchids, attending to the rose bushes or just weeding.  I'll grant you he did not look like this hand embroidered Oriental gentleman, in fact he did not look like this at all-but he was Chinese.  I took artistic license to a whole new level with this one.

The trees, in keeping with the Oriental theme were outlined in the Pekinese Stitch and filled in with the Pekin Knot. 

The great many leaves are satin stitched and the gentleman is done in long/short stitches using DMC variegated cotton thread.  His belt is done in DMC Rayon thread.  The flowers, I used hand-dyed silk thread.  The interesting thing about this block, is that I felt that I should not go "crazy" with embellies, as the main figure is masculine.  Every stitch along the way was carefully considered, eight out of ten were rejected as my brain kept saying "this is a male dominated block."

If you would like to leave a comment and I hope you do, please click on the post title, Garden Stroll - May CQJP 2014 and the Comment dialogue box will open.  Thank you and Enjoy!

Butterfly World

Dorie and I spent yesterday afternoon at Butterfly World.  It was her first time visiting the park and my fourth or fifth visit...I don't remember exactly.  The day was lovely, the company fun and interesting. After a forty-five minute Butterfly Gardening Workshop, we stepped into the glorious, colorful world of the Paradise Adventure Aviary, a tropical rain forest where almost 20,000 butterflies are on live display.

Every week, almost three thousand butterflies are released into the Aviary to maintain this butterfly heaven. They glide and flutter by, alighting on leaves, flowers, people...like this Idea Leuconoe, also known as Tree Nymphs, Paper Kites and Rice Paper butterflies. They are native to Malaysia. I think this one likes my dress.

The average life span of butterflies is 20-40 days and much of that depends on weather, food supplies and predators but those are not concerns the butterflies of Paradise Adventure Aviary have to worry about. I do not know the names of all the butterflies, like this one, for instance...

This one I believe is the Emerald Swallowtail...

Here's the Graphium Agamemnon, also know as the Green-spotted Triangle, Tailed Green Jay. It's native to India, Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia and Australia.

And then there is this flower...incredibly beautiful!

There are a lot more pictures to post of yesterday's escapade with the butterflies, so stay tuned.  If you would like to leave a comment and I hope you do, please click on the post title, Butterfly World and the Comment dialogue box will open.  Thank you and Enjoy!

Dragon in April - CQJP 2014

I think I bought this paperback, Traditional Chinese Designs Iron On Transfer Patterns about 20 years ago. Paid the princely sum of $3.95 for it. For many days after my purchase, as I thumbed through the patterns, I imagined all the wonderful embroidered pictures I would stitch. However, the book soon got swallowed up in my library and was all but forgotten - until the Dragon in April, CQJP2014!

Gold beads, gold thread and lots of red and green in this block. My beloved ribbed spider web stitch, cast-on stitches and trapunto dragon.  Long/short stitches for the red carnation an iron-on transfer from the long forgotten paperback.  

Herringbone stitch, lazy daisy and I satin stitched the leaves.

If I can keep up with this pace, I'll have May and June done in April.  Won't that be great!

If you would like to leave a comment and I hope you do, please click on the post title, Dragon in April - CQJP 2014 and the Comment dialogue box will open.  Thank you and Enjoy!

Thinking of You...

How does one react when one hears that a friend is battling cancer?  My first thought is to do something...not certain what I should be doing though.

So I made a card.  I sought some help with the layout and dropped in at Mojo Monday as I'm finding it difficult to focus with all the memories running rampant in my mind. The paper is from, you guessed it, Graphic45. I hand wrote the sentiment.

Study in Green

As I'm on the topic of changing gears, I thought I would experiment a bit with thread painting.
Thread painting as defined by the Queen of thread painting, Nancy Prince is "free-motion machine embroidery, a unique way of embellishing your quilts by "painting" the image on your quilt top...The  quilt is your canvas and the thread is your paint."
In a previous post dated June 7, 2011, titled Layer Upon Layer Upon...I stated that the more layers you have, the more dimension and depth your piece will have."  So, I thought why not create the first layer with paint.  I then painted PFD (prepared for dyeing) a tightly woven, white fabric with Pebeo, Setacolor Transparent paints.

Once dried, it was heat set with a hot iron and I pulled a few of the threads I intend to use in this exercise.  I'm thinking the piece is going to be both free motion machine embroidered and hand embroidered.

While pulling the threads for the piece, I thought it would be a good idea if I practiced a little before attempting the main act...

and so now I present my Study in Green, not the main act. In this trial run I used Superior Thread, Nature Colors, Trilobal Polyester and King Tut, also by Superior.

After hooping the fabric, threading the machine with the darkest green first, lowered the feed dogs, adjusted the tension, forgot to change the bobbin case, I placed the hoop under the open-toe darning foot of my Janome 6260 and off I went.  It takes concentration and a light touch on the hoop to move it at just the right speed.  There were lots of thread changes as I needed to see how the colors worked together...or not. The tension is not quite right but that is probably due to the fact that I did not change the bobbin case, which in my Janome, can be removed.

Here's my separate bobbin case just for thread painting. I'm allowed to play with the tiny screw (Phillips head screw) in the designated thread painting bobbin case! By turning the screw, one quarter turn at a time, I can adjust the bobbin thread tension.

I'm glad I did the trial run. I will have to do another with the adjusted bobbin case and see if there is any improvement.

If you would like to leave a comment and I hope you do, please click on the post title...Study in Green and the Comment dialogue box will open.  Thank you and Enjoy!

Changing Gears A Bit...

I needed to change gears in my brain a little, so I created this large, vintage tag.  I used paper from my favorite paper crafting company Graphic45 and fun findings from Tim Holtz.  

I don't remember where I got the ornate cylinder but I inserted a used,vintage, postage stamp into it. Come to think of it, I don't remember where I got the postage stamp.  Love the film strip and the Imagine metal tag!

The key I believe is also from Tim Holtz. I made the paper rosettes using scraps left over from other paper crafting projects.  There are two pull-out tags for journaling.

It's lovely to change gears...

If you would like to leave a comment and I hope you do, please click on the post title...Changing Gears A Bit and the Comment dialogue box will open.  Thank you and Enjoy!

Dragon in April

In planning my blocks for April I chose this dragon print for the center of the light colored block. This block incorporates some of the fabric used in the prior light block (see Post titled, Crazy Quilt Journal Project 2014-March Block). I'm hoping to achieve a sense of unity and a smooth flow from one block to another.

As I work my way through the design process, I would often lay my threads, ribbons, lace, trim on the chosen fabrics to see how well they play together. Sometimes it works well, at other times, they shout "don't you even go there, lady!" At that point, I remove the offending detail and try another until I'm satisfied and/or happy that it might work. 

I pin like my life depended on it. The different weights of the fabrics used in piecing crazy quilt blocks tend to slip, slid, pull and twist as they move under the machine's needle.  Pinning helps to stabilize the fabrics. I just have to remember to get the pin out before the needle hits it.

The block is now ready to be embroidered but before I do so, I like to have an idea of where I'm going and perhaps the stitches I might use.  

An exact layout is drawn with possible stitch ideas.

If you would like to leave a comment and I hope you do, please click on the post title...Dragon in April and the Comment dialogue box will open.  Thank you and Enjoy!

Crazy Quilt Journal Project 2014 - March's Block

This was a busy week for me. I got all our tax paperwork organized, copied and dropped the entire package in the mail to the accountant. I was on a roll... so I closed all the old files (2011, 2012 and 2013) boxed, labeled and stored those. Then proceeded to open new files, cleaned out the filing cabinet and shredded what needed to be shredded. Glad that's over with!
Then, I finished my March block for CQJP2014. I did have to make some changes to the original design, nothing major, but the evolution of ideas is quite interesting to follow. I know that not every idea will make it's way onto a particular block and so keeping a sketch pad nearby is a good way for me to record my thoughts and ideas. Bless the person who invented the eraser!

Each block is a third of the envisioned tumbling block which I believe traditionally, is made up of a dark colored, a light colored and a medium colored block. I've pinned the blocks together (see below) to see what it will look like and I like what I see.

Well, one done, twelve to go! In other words, I've thirty-three of these suckers, oops, blocks, to finish so unto the dragon of April. Stay tuned...

If you would like to leave a comment and I hope you do, please click on the post title...Crazy Quilt Journal Project 2014 - March's Block and the Comment dialogue box will open.  Thank you and Enjoy!

So I Changed My Mind!

So... I had a plan! It was not etched in stone but sketched on paper.  Erasers are wonderful things but I decided not to use them, as I would like to keep a record of alternative ideas that come along while I work the block.

This is a close up of the changes made to the original design.

So the block, which is not yet completed, looks like this. Note the two heart instead of the three along the center right seam as oppose to the middle seam as in the original drawing.  And what with the pink, I haven't used it anywhere in the block...yet!

Stay tuned... I'm sure there will be more changes to come.

If you would like to leave a comment and I hope you do, please click on the post title...So I Changed My Mind! and the Comment dialogue box will open.  Thank you and Enjoy!

Pencil & Paper

March block for the CQJP2014 in the planning stages.  I thought that this time round I will employ the assistance of pencil & paper to get my thoughts together before I start to stitch.

Stay tuned to see how the block progresses.