Journal Cozy

I love my patchwork Moleskine notebooks so much that I dislike writing in plain ones anymore -- to the point that I will avoid making notes until I have time to decorate a new notebook.  (I know that's ridiculous.)  Then inspiration hit, in the form of an embellished Ann Taylor sweater from the thrift store.  Why not make a journal cozy that I could reuse?

It took a lot of improvisation to get to this design.  Some things I learned:

• Don't try to machine-sew over beads and sequins.  Just don't.
• It might be a good idea to use some stabilizer if you're going to sew satin ribbon to sweater fabric.  If you plan to do this, make sure ahead of time that you have some on hand.  Otherwise, you might have to change your plans.
• Sometimes you end up with a significantly different-looking finished product than you envisioned.
• From my young friend Miss R. -- ‎"Don't be afraid it won't be perfect, the only thing to be afraid of really is that it won't BE."

Instead of binding the edges with pink satin ribbon or hemming them, I had to opted to zig-zag them with pink and purple thread.  Rather than try to get the stitching "just so," which I knew I couldn't do, I went over the stitching several times in different colors for a layered effect.  I like the way it turned out.

To finish, I zig-zagged a double length of grosgrain ribbon into the back my new notebook for place-holders, letting the stitching go a bit wonky once again.

What a fun project!  I will be interested to see how useful this turns out to be.

Wonky Blocks

I'm sorry for disappearing these last few months; it has been a crazy summer, with trips to visit aunties and Alma Maters, a lovely vacation at the beach and many weeks of driving long distance to (totally worth it!) day camp in the Pinelands.  Thankfully, school starts up again tomorrow and things are settling down again.  I have many projects to show you! Let me start with my latest passion, the "mystery quilt," to which I will give the working title "Wonky Blocks."  (An appropriate homemade gift will go to the person who can guess the actual name of the quilt before it is finished -- I will be dropping hints along the way!)

I am working entirely with pieces from my scrap box and from pre-cut (homemade) charm squares and jelly roll strips so far -- I will need to purchase fabric for a border, backing, and possibly for binding as well.  The process of making the blocks has been quite liberating -- I started making geometrically precise little blocks with the pre-cuts, and finished by sewing the tiniest scraps together in any way they would go and cutting the results into squares.  I'm loving the results!

Putting the quilt-block puzzle together is exciting and hurts my head, and is taking up the living room where D will want to set up with his computer as he is working from home today, and I am not half done yet.  There may be turf wars to come.

Still to do:  piece quilt; determine a size for the quilt (how wide do they make quilt batting, anyway, and can you sew two lengths of batting together to make a larger one?); determine type of border to use and amount(s) of fabric to buy; and so on, and so on. 

Stashbusting; or, I am totally making this quilt

I have officially declared May "No New Fabric Month."  In preparation, I have been rummaging through my scrap bins to identify usable material, and cutting it up into sizes predetermined by the good folks at Moda, who make those irresistible charm packs, layer cakes and jelly rolls lying around next to the bolts in the quilting stores. 

This is what I got out of the "small scraps" bin!

I could buy any number of books of quilt patterns that utilize the pre-cuts, but I was feeling thrifty and started hunting around on the web for free patterns, and I found this tutorial for a Value Quilt.  I love it!  It cries out to me!  I must make one!  You will excuse me, please, if I go back to my scrap bins and keep cutting.  I am on a mission!

One word

Oh, I love it!

I just had to pop in and point you to Amanda Soule's latest creation, a gorgeous fleece-backed flannel quilt, made simply of large blocks and tied at the corners, so cozy for her youngest child's new bed. I am entranced by the new collection of prints by Anna Maria Horner, so bright and pretty. If only I didn't have such a backlog of projects, I would certainly copy this one! Go take a look; it will make you smile.

Busy day

Found lovely St.-Mary's-Blue patterned flannel in several designs, now have a handful of ideas to try and may actually be able to bring something to the Episcopal Church Women's annual meeting on Sunday where I'll be asking for folks to volunteer to help with the Baptism Blanket project -- I will be getting to work on that shortly.

Purchased lovely deep pink variegated pearl cotton to hand-quilt the yellow-green silk dupioni with a cerise cotton backing. It's all so soft and beautiful, I can't wait to start! I need to buy a hand-quilting frame before I can work on that, though.

Finished knitting the first mitten in a pair of beautiful blackberry wool tweed and was unimpressed with the result, but am so confident halfway through the second one that I'm fairly certain I'll be able to complete mitten #2 and rework mitten #1 into wearable (if not even giftable) pair by the end of the weekend, assuming other projects don't distract me.

Loving being immersed in art and craft -- this is living my dream!

Working glimpse

Here are a few more peeks into my studio. I'm hard at work in here, really!

My computer workstation needs a bit of work to become functional -- I have to face the fact that my studio will also be a small home office for dealing with financial matters and general paperwork, and I'll have to allocate some space for that. Hopefully the cabinet in my secretary desk will hold most of that, with maybe a file cabinet to replace the plastic crates we've been using to file papers in since we were in college. Not my favorite part of sprucing up the place, but a definite necessity.


Over by the window, my comfy chair, which I very rarely sit in as it's usually covered in whatever projects I'm working on at the moment. Now that I'm right next door to the washer and dryer, I can be felting sweaters and pre-washing fabric while I'm ironing, cutting out quilting squares and sewing patchwork pieces together. It's a dream come true! And I do love to se eall of my favorite books on the shelves behind the chair -- they are so decorative as well as functional.

Here's the picture I promised of the finished Felted Wool Baby Blanket on the back of the comfy chair. I like it better as I look at it more, and I think I can learn to live with imperfection. When I get frustrated I need to remind myself that I haven't taken lessons, I've only been sewing for a short while, and I will get the hang of it in time. I feel like it's important for me to continue to be fearless and keep trying new things, because that's how I will learn -- and I am learning, and how exciting it is!

Byrd is the word

I try to get to choir rehearsal about half an hour early each week, in order to catch up on filing or in case the director has anything he'd like me to help him with. This past Wednesday he had a whopping pile of music to be distributed into the choir members' boxes -- not surprisingly, since Lent is moving along at a fast clip and we'll be needing a ton of music for Holy Week and Easter. I looked at the first piece and saw that it was a particular favorite of mine, perhaps my actual all-time favorite choral work, and I jumped for joy. Really. You can ask him.

It's William Byrd's "Ave Verum Corpus." You can listen to it here.

Aside from the fact that it's just an unutterably beautiful motet, I think it is a memory I associate with the Byrd piece that causes it to fill me, not so much with hope, but with certainty, that this Holy Week and Easter will be solemn and sacred and vivid and glorious. This is what I remember:

While I was at Carleton I sang in the vocal ensemble in the Carleton Pro Musica. There were usually between eight and ten of us, and we rehearsed twice a week in a little practice room in the Music & Drama building. (Aside: The M&D was one of the few places where you could still enter part-way into the underground tunnels that used to connect the buildings to afford students and faculty some shelter from the harsh Minnesota winters.)

We would sing silly warm-up exercises and then work hard on the pieces we were given to learn, with guidance from the group's director as he dropped in, working his way through the different ensembles. Looking back now, I can see that we were spoiled in that a) we had plenty of rehearsal time, and b) we had in common the drive to perfect our performance. In our church choir (which I have sung in for ten years) we are blessed with neither, which I am no longer bitter about -- that's life -- but sometimes it makes me feel disappointed.

So during Spring term of my Freshman year we were given the Byrd "Ave Verum" to work on, and I think it was a favorite with pretty much everybody. I don't remember much about the rehearsals, except that as time went on I put more and more effort into following the tenors' line, which, if I closed my eyes, would make me feel like I was floating on air. One afternoon we all agreed to troop down to the basement to the tunnels so we could rehearse the lovely motet among the tunnels' astonishingly good acoustics.

When we got there, we mixed and mingled and molded ourselves into an inward-facing circle. Someone gave the pitch and we began to sing. I don't know who hit the lights, but almost immediately I felt hands holding each of mine. We sang the whole piece through, in the dark, holding hands, with that lush sound resonating about us. I can't remember another time when I've felt so real, so present, so completely involved in what I was doing.

It's a reminder to me, today, that when I sing, be it the William Byrd or the Patricia Hurlbutt (yes, you read that right, and the composer's name is indicative of what we'd like to do with her anthem) -- I need to be alive, focused, prepared to work as hard as I can to ensure that whatever piece I'm performing is as perfect as possible, and to inspire others to do the same. This is not a small challenge, but it is definitely worthwhile.

What she said

Earlier this week, on Soulemama's blog, I read a post that truly inspired me. You can read the entirety of it here -- and I would encourage you to do so if for no other reason than to drink in the glorious photographs she includes in every post -- but the comments below do a great job of summarizing how I'm feeling without my adding a thing:

Sometimes these things - our passions and our projects - get done in simple, yet miraculous ways: in the two-minute increments of time that may appear at a time; with the help of a sweet husband who carries a little extra weight for a moment so I can do something as silly as knit a sleeve in silence; or as the chosen priority for a day over a pile of laundry/bathroom cleaning/bill paying. Sometimes we go to extreme/comical/ridiculous measures to make our passions happen in the everyday. Because the way it makes me feel - the way it feeds my soul - well, that fuels me to be a better person. And a better mom.

One little stitch at a time.