Stages, Part III

Where did I leave off? Oh, yes. Quilting.

So I survived the quilting stage (and had in there somewhere a brief latch-hook rug-making stage, which I don't care to go into) and moved on to my papier maché stage. Remember my short-lived and unsuccessful attempt at papier maché as a kid? This time I was wise enough  to purchase pre-made papier maché material, called Cellu-Clay, I seem to recall,  from the local craft store.

My friend Vicki at work had attended a craft fair in Virginia just before the holidays, and there she'd purchased a tree ornament that intrigued both of us. In the shape of a Santa's head, it seemed to be made from...what? We pondered. We speculated it might have a Christmas bulb inside, that's how light it was. We wondered HOW this ornament had been made.

One day as I browsed my latest edition of Leisure Arts' Spirit of Christmas, I found the ornament! It was made of papier maché, and it had as its core... crumpled tin foil. Crumpled tin foil!!?? I could crumple tin foil, for crying out loud.

I purchased a block of Cellu-Clay, a card of bobby pins, and some paint, and I went to work. Viola! Santa tree ornaments. I developed my own "style," and I use the term loosely, but they did look sort of like Santa heads. I decorated our tree with the ornaments, I gave away ornaments, I sold ornaments to a local handcraft shop. At any given time throughout the next year, there were 25-30 Santa tree ornaments, drying and ready to be painted, hanging from a dryer arm on our woodstove.

I branched out. The next Christmas Vicki gave me a beautiful standing Santa, obviously made of papier maché. I deluded myself into thinking my artistic skills matched those of Vicki's mother-in-law, who'd made this gift. I was wrong, of course, but I had fun trying. Ken made several wooden stands and cores for my standing Santas, and I made the actual Santas. None of them matched the one I'd been given, so that particular brief dalliance with papier maché was short-lived.

Making the tree ornaments, though, was enough. A failed childhood project could now be put to rest.

Hanging Baskets

I put up the hanging baskets this morning. I'll have to take them in each evening, no doubt, because Maine isn't free of frost, for certain, until the end of this month. 

Two Great Sites

For a look at a wonderful quilting site, go here. Then, if that doesn't make you drool, go to Dances with Wool, the website of one of the bloggers at the Fine Stitches quilting site. She's a first-rate fiber artist, Lene is, living above the Arctic Circle in Finland. I've followed her knitting blog for quite awhile and am amazed at the beauty of her work.

They're here!

I spotted the first oriole of the season on Tuesday. As you can see, he went straight for the suet cake and ignored the orange beside it. This morning I spotted the first ruby-throated hummingbird. Somehow I always feel certain that spring is, indeed, here, once these birds arrive.

Stages, Part II

So I moved from the cross-stitch stage on to the quilting stage. My New Brunswick grandmother used to make quilts and I cherished one, a Double Wedding Ring,  that she gave me when I was around 18. Grammy belonged to the Women's Institute in New Brunswick; the Institute ladies on Dorne Ridge would get together for quilting bees, producing these beautiful, entirely handmade and handquilted quilts. I longed to make quilts of my own, so I began buying quilting magazines and books and studying various quilt patterns. The first quilt I attempted, though, was way beyond my capability and patience. It was a "Star of Alabama," it consisted of a gazillion pieces, and I cut out maybe 500 of the pieces before I tearfully admitted defeat. Those pieces are still hidden away in a manila envelope somewhere in the guest room.

I realized I needed to start small, with quilt blocks of ten pieces or fewer in their design, so I began again, this time with a Dresden Plate pattern, and moved on from there: Grandmother's Fan, Double Wedding Ring, Hole in the Barn Door.... I favored the classic patterns, and I thought a quilt had to be pieced by hand as well as quilted by hand for it to be considered a true "quilt." (It didn't take me long to get over the notion of hand piecing the quilt, but I continued to quilt by hand, with the quilt layers attached to a large Sears Roebuck quilting frame, for several years. I loved the step of putting the quilt top, batting, and backing layers together, basting them, and attaching the "sandwich" to my quilting frame. Then the hand quilting process, the most time-consuming step began. A quilt typically stayed on the frame for 3 to 6 months, and I would try to find an hour  or thirty minutes at the end of each day to sit down and quilt.

I began to realize, though, that those few who received my quilts as gifts were not impressed that the thing was hand quilted rather than machine quilted. Still I pressed on, turning up my nose at machine-quilted quilts and truly despising tied quilts.

I made many quilts, maybe 20 in all, full-sized, meticulously handquilted, striving for 10 stitches per inch (which is considered the Cadillac of quilting), but usually having to settle for only 8 stitches per inch.

I was so obsessed with quilting that I spotted quilt patterns in floor tiles, in art work, in wall paper designs. Quilting was never far from my mind. One summer, on a trip to Prince Edward Island, my husband patiently tolerated my having to stop at every farm house with a "Quilts for Sale" sign at the end of the driveway. We would stop to chat with the farm lady and admire her beautiful quilts.

One of my quilts appeared on the cover of Quilt magazine, and my modest article on designing quilt patterns appeared in a later issue of the same magazine.

I ate, slept, and breathed quilts. I made queen-sized quilts, standard-sized quilts, lap quilts, crib quilts, doll bed quilts; I joined with friends to make one or two quilts to raffle for fundraisers; I thumbed through quilt magazines in stores and bought most of them; I subscribed to quilt magazines that I especially liked and still have them carefully stacked and stored for "some day."

Alas, within the past year or two, I've begun to ponder the common sense of machine quilting. Why not? A machine-quilted one is still beautiful and still warm, right? I've purchased a quilting foot attachment for my sewing machine and am now waiting for inspiration to strike. I don't think my grandmother would disapprove.

But it was time to move on....

Stages, Part I

I've often said I can identify the stages of my life by the kind of needlework or other craft I happened to be addicted to at the time. I've always had a need to make things, and making things gives me a tremendous sense of accomplishment, even  though my work is strictly amateur, and I'm obviously the first to admit it.

I remember my brothers pointing out areas of clay on the river bank across from our farm, so I decided I'd make pottery. Nothing ever came of that dream, of course, because I didn't know diddly-squat about making things of clay. Nothing came of my dream of making woven baskets from the cat o' nine tails growing in the marsh above our fa

rm, although the reeds soaked in our kitchen sink until my mother told me to dump out the mess. Nothing came of my dream, at least not for many years, to make papier maché artwork, either, despite the torn-up newspaper bits soaking in a pail of water in our shed. That mess I dumped when it started growing moldy.

I don't know when I started sewing; it was just something I learned to do because my mother did it. She made my dresses and my coats when I was a little girl, so I made clothes f

or my dolls. I wish I had some of those doll clothes now, just to check out the quality of my sewing. I suspect it was pretty rough. When my older sister was pregnant with her first child, I was about ten years old. I decided that baby, which I was so excited about, must have a quilt handmade by me, her soon-to-be-aunt. I knew nothing about quiltmaking, but I remember the quilt. I remember, in fact, going to my sister's home after the baby was born and seeing my niece sleeping in her bassinet, the handmade quilt on top of her. I thought the baby AND the quilt were both beautiful. My sister confessed not too many years ago that the quilt was actually...lacking...in the "beauty" department: I'd used various pieces of ugly fabric, even

 black, to create my masterpiece.

I continued sewing, making my own clothes once I was in high school and college. I made my wedding dress, too. Sure, it was an extremely simple design, but I would have felt like an idiot if I'd worn a dress wi

th flounces and bows. That's just not me.

My life since marriage has been filled with all kinds of crafts, most of them involving fabric and needles. The crewel embroidery phase lasted quite awhile: I made large floral pictures in crewel, and Ken made the frames. Once our walls were sufficiently hidden in crewel work, and once I finally realized crewel was going out of style, I moved on to cross-stitch. I purchased yards of aida cloth and just about 

every DMC floss color available, and I cranked out cross-stitch items: framed designs, Christmas tree ornaments, whatever.  To be continued: I'm not even half-way through my "stages"!

China Reminiscences

Taking home greens to the pigs? Chengdu, China, one Saturday morning.

Luodai, China: An elderly citizen and, in the background, a young woman getting water at the town pump.

 

A young mother and her child, Luodai.

A reader commented that Pavlova looks hard to make. Actually, it's extremely easy to make. I almost feel guilty that a birthday treat takes so little time to put together. I have another Pavlova in the oven this morning, in fact.

I'm putting my China entry back up, because the same reader mentioned she was interested in it....

My China writings are here. Scroll to the bottom of the list of entries, then click on "Previous" until you get to the China entries.