Yippee! Productivity!

In spite of the low-grade headache I had most of the day yesterday I was able to finally find some embellishments I thought would be fun to use on a doll body for the Comfort Dolls Project (see link in sidebar). The body was made about 5 years ago so she's been very patient with me, waiting for her adornments! I'm quite pleased with the way she turned out:



The flowers are glass beads, the "vine" is a ball chain I picked up at Wal-Mart some time ago (back when I would still venture into that store). I thought it worked very well.


That success inspired me to add a little more "hair" to the first doll I worked on:


Maybe she's done now. ;- )


When I couldn't post my accomplishments to my blog last night (it was that bewitched time of day when Blogger doesn't cooperate) I surfed some other blogs. I got hooked by the 6x4 Lives challenge at Sharon B's blog. There's so much to see and to read on her blog that I hadn't really looked into it on previous visits. As I read about it last night, however, my mind conjured up all sorts of possibilities for the 6x4 postcard format. I've made fabric postcards before, but using that format for personal experimentation or recordkeeping had never occurred to me (duh!). I got so inspired that this morning I have been going through my stash of batting bits and pieces, cutting them to either 4" x 6" or 8.5" x 11" for my journal quilts.



I haven't come across any yet that were big enough for more placemats. There's another bin for the bigger pieces of batting. Maybe when I get into that one I'll also find a piece to use in the baby quilt I'm supposed to be finishing up for the wee one due at the end of August or early September!

Gifts and Comfort

My birthday was back in June. My sister sent me the dvd of the PBS program "Craft in America" and a note stating this was only part of the gift. The rest of the gift was delivered Friday: the coveted tote bag from Trader Joe's! Hurray! Ever since I caught a glimpse of it on Be*mused's blog I've wanted one. We don't have a Trader Joe's close enough to us for me to shop for one myself but I mentioned it to my sister in Oregon and apparently she was keeping an eye out for me. When she finally found one she bought it and kept it at her house to air out for a few weeks. I don't know how comfortable I'll be carrying it into Fred Meyer or our food co-op to pack my groceries home in but I'll sure enjoy having it to look at in the studio! If I were a knitter I would use it to carry around my WIP. I may have to find a nice big UFO to keep in it so I can justify leaving it out in plain sight! (Shouldn't be too hard, considering the number of UFO's I have on hand...)



By the way, if you haven't seen the "Craft in America" program yet be sure to look for it on your local PBS station. DH and I caught it accidently one day and were mesmerized. That's when I mentioned it to my sister. She had seen it too and was also fascinated by it. I've watched the dvd twice now since receiving it for my birthday a little more than a month ago.


Every day last week I seemed to run into something that made me ill. Just when I'd begin to feel better, wham! a new toxin would hit me. I hardly left the house either. Which means the toxins were coming in through open windows or being released here in the house. I felt well enough Saturday to do a bit of beading on a doll body I'd made a few years ago:


(I wish the beads showed up better in the photo.) I'm not sure whether she's done or not. I'd like to do something for a face but everything I've tried hasn't looked right. I really like the swirls of color in the fabric so that's what I used to direct my beading. My intention is to send this along to Pat for her Comfort Doll Project. I'd like to get another one done and send a pair of them at one time. I have other doll bodies I might be able to use. Or I might make up a new pattern. Just for fun let me show you a few of the small dolls I made back when I was making more dolls than quilts:

This is my first "Belle." The placement of the pattern in the fabric makes this doll. I only added the bells and beads for her hair. I happen to love the tinkling sound the bells make. To me they are the voice of the doll, speaking words of encouragement and comfort.




I think of this one as my "Beach Belle." Same hairdo, button face (mother-of-pearl) and another button I see as a sand dollar or other natural ocean flotsam one would find on a beach (I cut off the shank so it could be sewn flat to the doll body).




Finally there's Flo. Flo is straight out of the 1950's and ready to serve tea. I don't have a clue where she came from. She's very prim and proper and a very conscientious hostess. I am SO not like her!



All of these dolls are original creations. I only have these and a couple of others still in my possession. The rest have been sold or given away. What's amazing to me is how these little inanimate objects - nothing more than fabric, stuffing, and bits and pieces of embellishments - can have so much power to soothe or lift a wounded spirit.

Not Much Action in the Nest

This will be a brief post as I'm still not feeling well after several unexpected chemical exposures over the last few days. I haven't had the enthusiasm or the energy to do much of anything but I have made some progress on my current journal quilt:




The bright orphan bits and pieces I recently uncovered are calling to me softly and I have a hint of an idea for my next journal quilt. What I need is to be well enough to respond to these whispers of the muse. Sometimes I can force myself to action on a project or necessary chore. What I'm finding more difficult to deal with are the changes in mood and outlook that chemical exposures seem to cause in me. Toxins alter my brain chemistry, and not in a good way. (It occurs to me that I may have mis-named this blog. It would have been more accurate to title it "From the Canary's Nest" as I am but one of the canaries in the coal mine of our toxic environment.)

Ack! More Orphans!

After I finished the fourth placemat in my now-official "Placemat Series" it occurred to me that I had not come across a house block that I distinctly remember making but do not remember using.

"Where is that block?" I wondered.

I had been through the blocks in the drawer often enough to be confident it was not in the drawer.

"Have I used it in something I've forgotten about?" I don't know what that would have been.

I lay awake that night, thinking about it.

The next morning, on a whim, I went into my studio closet. My studio, I should confess, is what was intended to be the master bedroom of this house. The closet, therefore, is twice the size of any of the other closets in the house. It has rather deep, dark recesses at either end which I have managed to fill up with assorted boxes and containers of things. You know the sorts of things that end up in those kinds of corners. Don't tell me you don't! Anyway, right on top of one of those stacks of boxes was a pair of brown cardboard boxes almost exactly the same size and shape. I pulled them both down to inspect the contents. The first box held rescued linens that I intended to incorporate in my quilts someday. You know, dish towels with puppies embroidered on them, an embroidered pillow top, a couple of small molas I acquired when I was working at the La Conner Quilt Museum... that sort of thing. But the box held something else as well: more orphan blocks and bits. For heaven's sake! How did these get in here? Why weren't they with all of the others? What am I going to do with these?



Well, several of them were four-patch blocks featuring animals that finished at 3". There were a few strips of piano key or Chinese Coin piecing. Hmmm... you know... if I alternate the four-patches with the strip pieced bits...

Before I knew it I had another placemat ready to be quilted! DD had asked for one that had an assortment of animals on it for DGD to find and name. And I didn't even have to work at it!



And that house block? I found it. It was in the second box, the one clearly labeled "Houses."

The New Project

In my last post I mentioned I had a new project in the works. This is the story of how it came about and what has come from it. Read on if you dare!

DD has been using plastic laminated placemats on her daughter's Elmo table to protect the surface during meals, etc. Last week or so she asked if I would be willing to make some "wild and funky" placemats to replace them as they were beginning to show signs of wearing out.

They could be a Christmas gift she said.

I said, "of course!"

Saturday (I think) DD informed me that the plastic mats had come apart already and she'd had to throw them out. Could I make a couple of new mats ASAP? And could at least one of them feature the primary colors so she could help DGD learn her colors?

Hmmm... You know, I don't think there's anything I love more than a design challenge! (That's design, not engineering or construction!)

Because DGD and I are such fans of Elmo (see Monday's Meme) the first thing I did was to go through my fabric stash to see whether I had something that might have The Little Red One's image on it. Nope, no luck. But I had some scraps from curtains someone had made that had pictures of Big Bird and Bert and Ernie and Cookie Monster on it. Big Bird was too big for a placemat, I only really had pieces of Ernie, and, to be honest, Bert was a little scary. Cookie Monster was as good a place to start as any! I went through my pile of food fabrics (novelty prints with images of food on them) and discovered I had fruits, vegetables, ice cream - in two different prints! - Hershey's candies, and one rectangular scrap of a guy making pizza. I could either be the BAD Grandma and surround Cookie Monster with ice cream and candy or I could be a GOOD Grandma and give him nothing but fruit and vegetables to eat. I chose to let Cookie have his pizza, an assortment of fruit, and a few vegetables. I put the ice cream on the back of the placemat for dessert. :- )





Next I wanted to attack the problem of a placemat featuring the primary colors of the color wheel. This was harder than I expected. I kept trying to make it more complex than it needed to be, both in the number of colors and the construction. It's only a placemat for crying out loud! DD specifically suggested solid colors, maybe set with black. I'm sorry, but, "yuck!" I don't DO solid colors! I've made my share of Amish style blocks and quilts in the past, and yes, black does set colors off beautifully, but I have to do something to make this project fun for me to do! Or at least interesting.

I did my best to pick out fabrics/prints that read as a solid color. I was determined to include the neutrals as well: black, white, and one shade of brown. I envisioned a rainbow effect. Maybe I could pull that off in a Log Cabin block? This is what I came up with:



It's okay. I couldn't find anything I liked for a binding so in my haste to just get it done I resorted to black (technically it's a black Moda marble). I also quilted as I constructed the block. Which means I was sewing the strips on and sewing through the batting and the backing all at the same time. Somehow one green/purple seam got skewed. I blame the polyester batting I was using. Or the cheap green fabric. Whatever; DGD won't care!

Not being entirely happy with that attempt at the color wheel I gave it another go. This time I used simple squares of each color (which DD herself had suggested - ahem) and I didn't work so hard to try to find prints that represented the pure hue. Personally I like this set of colors better than the ones in the first effort. I even found a way to incorporate white and black and brown. The border fabric is perfect; it has all the colors I've used in the body of the mat (with the exception of black and brown). Choosing a binding took some time but I'm much happier with this second try. (Does it count as a series if you're just making placemats?)




The last mat I'm going to show you is actually the third one I made. It started with what was probably one of the oldest of my orphan blocks. As I've been going through them lately to make the Orphan Train quilt and the baby quilt I have tossed out a few from the early years that were made with the worst of fabrics. This block was a survivor. I've always thought it was cute, even if it was a little wonky, and considered making it into a doll quilt or something but, obviously, had never done that. Apparently I was saving it for this placemat because this went together more easily and happily than any of the others with the possible exception of Cookie Monster's. All I did was add a strip of the same print that I'd used in the center square to either side of the block and then fill out the corners with a vintage print I didn't even know I had in my stash. Bordered it with the blue plaid to make it bigger, found a perfect companion print to back it, and had enough of a red calico very much like what I'd used in the block to bind it. Voila! The whole thing reminds me of a picnic (even though the bears are doing chores like marketing and baking and mopping the floor!).




These first four placemats ought to be enough to hold her for a while. I have ideas swirling about for others now... holiday themes, crazy patch, maybe more orphan blocks... Fun, fun, fun!