Archive for the ‘sewing’ Category

During today’s visit, three fourth grade classes embellished quilt blocks they had made in art class prior to my visit. Each student made choices about whether to add fabric or whether to use embroidery thread alone to accent their pictures. They had drawn pictures on muslin squares and colored them using fabric markers. In each session, we had extra teachers helping to keep needles threaded and to help in other ways.

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I spent the day at St. Richard’s Catholic School — with two distinct assignments. First, I conducted three teacher workshops on integrating quilting into the curriculum and, second, I did two Wolfsnail presentations. St. Richard’s is a Whole School as designated by the Mississippi Arts Commission, which means that arts is integrated into teaching across the curriculum. Art Teacher Gene Everitt took this photograph of me during the teacher workshop.

The two Wolfsnail presentations were for first graders and second graders. My mother came in for the first Wolfsnail presentation because I asked her to videotape one of my readings. I am considering applying to join the Mississippi Arts Commission’s Teaching Artist Roster and the application requires recordings of presentations with students and with teachers. I am already a member of the MAC’s Artist Roster. The difference between the two is that in addition to maintaining artistic excellence and being able to share the arts practice and technique with students, teaching Artists are expected to have some expertise in developing lesson plans and in guiding teachers as they develop lesson plans.

The Davis Magnet School librarian also let me use the Davis camcorder to record my recent photo-selection work with Davis second graders. Between the two, I hope to have enough usable material.

Here’s the knitted log cabin blanket I started when I was recuperating from my surgery. The pattern is from Mason Dixon knitting. The yarn felt wonderful to work with and the colors kept me happy. I am sending it to a relative as a late Christmas present. She’s having some tough health problems, too, so I hope it will bring her some comfort. You followers of this blog will know that I also knitted a hat during my recuperation. The two were very different projects. The log cabin blanket involved just plain knitting, knitting, and more knitting. The hat involved knitting in the round, purling, counting stitches, etc. I think I’ll try to keep a log cabin knitting project going most of the time — it’s so simple and keeps my hands busy. Plus, I have lot of little bits of yarn left. My friend, Julie Owen, turned me on to log cabin knitting this summer when she would turn up at the pool with knitting when I turned up with quilting.

Now for the kind of log cabin I am more familiar with — a quilt. My first log cabin project, when I was a teenager, was a Christmas table cloth. It turned out so well that I made a bunch of them. My grandmothers, my godmother, and our family’s best friends all got Christmas table cloths that year. I had never tried a full-sized log cabin quilt until now. I chose yellow, blue, creams, tans, and browns. At first I had it laid out in diagonal lines, but Richard suggested this layout and I love it.

Update: The Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor Book stickers I ordered arrived today so I went to Lemuria to leave them enough for their signed stock. Here’s a post on A Year of Reading by a teacher who went by her local bookstore and picked up a copy of Wolfsnail.

There’s nothing like arriving at grand-mother’s house to a delicious meal — though, in this case, it was grandfather’s doing. A lovely bowl of penne pasta with a savory sauce. Mmmm. Dad also served warm french bread with a crispy crust. My sister made a tasty salad. The grownups had glasses of wine and we ate Dad’s spiced walnuts for dessert.

I like this one because it shows my 10-year-old wearing the fleece robe I made for him for Christmas. I ordered double sided fleece and got a quick sew pattern from a local sewing store. Today, now that it is cold enough to wear the robe, Douglas found a pin near the right pocket. Oops. My newfangled Bernina sewing machine came in handy because it has a double overlock stitch. The boys had no idea why I was keeping them out of the sewing room in the days before Christmas. I ordered yardage in two other colors (cappuccino and dark navy) for the older boys. They are deciding if they want robes or caftans.

Here’s my latest quilt block. It incorporates an interesting number pattern. The two innermost squares are 1-inch squares, the next is a 2-inch square, the next a 3-inch square, the next a 5-inch square, the next an 8-inch square, the last a 13-inch square. 1,1,2,3,5,8,13. Can you see the relationship between the numbers? (Hint: If I were to continue the pattern, the next square would be a 21-inch square.) This pattern was first identified in the 13th Century by a famous mathematician named Fibonacci.

(For all of you who are quilters, I cut the squares out with an extra 1/2 inch for the seam allowance so the finished squares would conform to the Fibonacci sequence.)

The spiral is made from a shiny ribbon-like thread. I sewed it to the top of the block using a couching foot. It can be seen in nature in the Nautilus snail shell (like the one to the right). At first I tried a cord (in hunter green), but it pulled the fabric too tight into the spiral and the block wouldn’t lay flat. I ripped it out with the seam ripper. I don’t particularly like to rip out sewing — especially tight stitches.

I was listening to a podcast of a writer talking about her work as I sewed (and ripped). I thought about the ripping as a kind of revising. I tend to like revising better than creating an original text. This doesn’t hold for the sewing. I was tempted to just begin another Fibonacci block and toss the one I had ruined with the cording. But I did like the colors of the squares inside the block so I took a deep breath and ripped.

I was sitting on the porch one evening in June and noticed the contrast between the crepe myrtles and the peace lily. I thought the image might make a nice wall-hanging — if I transferred the shapes and colors to fabric. Once I saw it on screen and noticed all of those circles in the background, I shied away from that idea. I can’t imagine sewing that many overlapping circles. But I still love the colors. This is certainly one of those times when I want the background to be soft.

Here’s my latest quilt top. It is a design I made up through trial and error. The saw tooth row and border pieces with string blocks at the corners were inspired by Hystercine Rankin’s Sunburst pattern. It is ready to be quilted. I haven’t decided the pattern I’ll use for quilting, but it’ll be something fairly simple.

You can find out more about Hystercine Rankin, a National Heritage Award winner, and see her African Sunburst here. The Mississippi Museum of Art will feature one of Mrs. Rankin’s narrative memory quilts in its September Unburied Treasures event (Sept. 16). My father, Dave Crosby, will talk about the quilt, which is part of the MMA’s permanent collection. I will read some of Rankin’s memories of learning how to quilt. The Port Gibson Heritage Singers will provide music. Learn more here.

We’ve had lots of rain and some wind from Hurricane Gustav, but nothing like Katrina three years ago. We’ve been told to expect more wind, rain, and possible tornadoes.

I spent a lot of the day in the sewing room, making another project. I’ll share a photograph one of these days.

I made a photo fabric book for my college roommate’s family; her “baby” was one year old last month and I visited just in time to take some photographs while she was still crawling and doing some very cute baby-like things. As you can see, the book is a take-off on the children’s classic Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

I designed the book using Adobe InDesign, printed the pages onto Printed Treasures fabric, and made the pages as if they were mini-quilts. I put buttonholes in each page and attached them using strips of fabric sewn together to make a ring so the pages could turn easily. It is so much fun to work with images and color! Of course, it helps when you have an adorable subject. I have only made one more like this one and it was for some friends who were expecting their fourth child — each family member had a page of his or her own.

I mean who could resist a smile like that?

Just to change things up a bit, here’s a wall-hanging I made earlier this year. It is a sampler from Ruth McDowell’s Piecing Workshop. I had a ton of fun making it and I want to get back to the technique soon, but using my own design. I’ve been accumulating the necessary supplies to make my own design: including a light table and more fabric. I’ll keep you posted on what I come up with.

Teachers gathered in the library for the final Faces of Chastain quilting workshop. Each learned to make a string block for the borders of the final Faces of Chastain panel quilt.

I also took photographs of the teachers. I will print them on fabric so the teachers’ faces will be included in the final panel quilt, too. It was an interesting afternoon as teachers who are usually isolated by geography or department were able to get to know each other.

Some teachers worked by hand; others used the two sewing machines.