months and years: Rabbit in the Moon quilt

a couple of months ago, I was approached about designing a table runner. Above is a sketch that was rejected. Even though it wasn't my client's taste, I liked it.

I liked it a lot. I wasn't going to let it go.

So instead, I added a gibbous moon to the mix and shuffled the moon phases around and made a quilt out of it. Or rather, I'm making it into a quilt, for the Months and Years shop. It's 36 inches wide and maybe 42 inches long - more on the measurements when it's all done. It's made of cotton canvas and two silk fabrics: the lighter colored one is a crosshatched medium-weight 100% silk suiting fabric in ivory and gold. The dark navy is silk dupioni (which I also used for the backing). The cotton canvas is the "sky" behind the moon phases. I treated the canvas with cyanoprint (sun print) dye and then scattered small branches and leaves from my garden over it and let the light develop. I overdyed this with a weak solution of purple and seafoam and spritzes of a saturated solution of warm black and navy. So, between the speckles and washes of purpley-blue-green, you can find outlines of cedar fronds and rose leaves on the sky.

I haven't quite figured out how I want to do the outline of the rabbit in the moon; for now, it's sketched in with running stitches. I think I'll couch a heavier thread so it shows up a bit better - for now, I'm just not quilting around it, so that I can still pull the layers apart and work on the rabbit without quilting it to the quilt back before I'm ready. There's a little flower quilted into the rabbits hip there, that you can just make out. I might do more of this on the rabbit...haven't decided yet. So many decisions!

What do you think I ought to do with that rabbit? Heavy thread, couched on? Embroidered leaf stitches? Or do you like it that the rabbit is so light and barely-visible like this? I'd love to hear your two cents!

project 52: 48 & 47, respectively

nail polish, spray paint, pressed garden flowers on paper

well, things have been a little quiet around here, haven't they? I've been really trying to crank out a few projects I swore I'd have done before summer was out. I just finished the second dress for the Months and Years shop yesterday. I know, I know, I said the shop would be up in August, didn't I? Well, now it looks like it'll be up for the winter holidays, instead. Just as well; I'd rather push the date back than skimp on the quality or ideas I have for the garments. But wow, it has been such a busy summer .

And as project 52 winds down, I'm excited to have more time back to myself - though I might keep making cards of some sort, periodically. I have a feeling I'm going to miss this bit of structure and challenge that I have given this year.

Above, coming full circle: you might recall that the third (I think/) project 52 postcard was made of a collage of 1/2" squares cut out of autumn leaves. And here are some of the flowers of my late  summer garden, pressed since July, and sent off last week.

nail polish, spray paint, acrylic, ink on paper

And catching up, here's the card from two weeks ago, inspired by a news item I'd heard on the radio about a new comet passing by us (I think it was a new one, anyway?), that scientists are going to study with a probe. Of course, the comet moves to quickly and the probe doesn't move quickly at all, so the solution was to latch the probe onto the comet and send it hurtling off into space with it, using  - of all things - a harpoon. I loved this image, kind of like the probe is Ahab and the comet is a white whale. I love that we transpose marine terminology to air and space travel ... there's something so charmingly nostalgic about it, that we get to use the same words our forebears used, to describe new forms of exploration long after the globe had been circumnavigated and mapped.

a postcard ... for somebody else!

We invited some new friends over for dinner and board games a couple of weeks ago. It was fun. They actually sent us a thank-you card afterward. I think Cass and I were both a little intimidated. "Oh. So that's how we do this?" (I mean, c'mon. This is Seattle. People wear jeans to the opera. We've made four-course dinners and then eaten them - with guests - in front of the TV, while watching a movie, noshing out of a communal bowl of truffled cauliflower risotto...things are different out here. Casual.)

So, last week they reciprocated: we went over to their place for dinner and games. Great food, great drinks, fun game. They gave us a little plastic bear as a kind of ... gee, I don't know. Favor? Joke? - to remember the dinner by.

"Hipster battle!" I joked to Cass. I pulled out one of those leftover marbleized postcards and made a thank-you-postcard featuring the bear. With a bunting. Because, you know, it's cute.

Okay, it's really cute. I made a high-res scan before sending the card, and I'm thinking of printing six- or eight-packs of these and including them in the Months and Years shop. What do you think? Would they sell?

(Also, still working on the second Months and Years dress. I will NOT cover the rest of the clothes in time-consuming appliques. But it's beautiful! And I'm getting there! Photos in a few weeks, I hope!) =)

a new venture

Later this year I'll be opening an etsy shop called Months and Years. There I will be selling heirloom-quality handmade baby clothes. Each will be unique; I will not be making multiples or runs of sizes. Each piece will have its own inspiration drawn from mythology, poetry, folklore, song, something; I'll include the story of each piece in each posting. I will post items in batches, a half-dozen at a time; and they'll be priced to move. My goal is to hopefully empty the shop almost as quickly as I fill it.

I'll be sure to post a quick preview shot of each of the six items here, as I finish them, and then I'll post an update about when they'll finally be available for sale.

Why am I doing this? Well, earlier this winter, I realized I wasn't satisfied with how I was spending my time. My evenings were long vacant swaths of TV-time - and I was feeling bored and a bit stifled. Sewing and embroidery are - I think - ideal evening activities. They require a kind of engineering-brain, able to follow instructions, and pay attention to details of measurement and construction, but they don't require the draining focus and observation and judgment of painting. So it's a good evening activity for morning-bird me, who is already pretty much done for the day, cognitively, by the time I'm having dinner.

So, what to sew? Well, my own weight is in flux, so I'm not really sewing for myself right now - better to wait and find out where my body will settle, THEN sew. And to boot, I have a lot of scraps in my fabric stash, as I tend to buy fabric in 3-, 4- or even 5-yard increments (so that I have flexibility when I sew - I can make whatever I want!). This leaves significant scraps - and as I only buy natural fibers, we're talking yards of silk, wool, cotton and linen here. This is not the kind of thing you just throw away.

So I settled on baby clothes. Plus, I've always LOVED baby clothes. I've always loved working in miniature in any medium; I love the fussy perfection of it, the detail, the smallness. I love that with very little material one can create a very rich effect. I even love the excess of it; what newborn child needs a hand-embroidered, herringbone silk twill dress (above)? No child, not really. Antonin Artaud, one of the French Surrealists, author of The Theatre and its Double, theorist of the Theatre of Cruelty, once wrote that excess without cause was the beginning of art. That pretty effectively describes the power of fascination that beautiful, artistic, tiny clothes hold for me - and why I like to make them; there's a potential to make the simple act of dressing into an art form.

So. Months and Years will be a kind of repository for periodic tiny collections of unique handmade clothes in a variety of sizes. The first piece of my first collection, above, is the "When the Violets Return" dress. It is inspired by an Irish prayer spoken when the gentians bloom in the Burren - and more on that when I finish the rest of the collection. It is a size 0-3 months, made from a warm and soft 100% silk herringbone twill (it has the weight and softness of a nice flannel shirt) with a cotton calico collar. The bodice buttons up the back, and the embroidered violets wrap over the shoulder and continue on the back of the yoke.

The next dress is inspired by line that I found very striking in a story from the Brothers Grimm; I'm still figuring out how I'm going to execute the ornamentation, but I'm excited to start cutting the fabric tonight; I have to measure my scraps and make sure I've enough cloth, but it should be a size 2T or 3T and made from fuzzy navy wool.