sing it with me now (with apologies to gene autry):

i’m back with a needle again.
out where a friend meets a friend.
where stitchin’ fingers feed
on cloth and thread and bead,
i’m back with a needle again.

been through a bit of a drought of late. or maybe it’s just the periodic fallow spell, who knows. won’t bore you with the evolution of it all, just know that i finally picked up needle and thread last night and am happy to report that i’m breathing easier and smiling more. it’s part of my dinner plate series.

i spent earth day collecting red clay from spots of earth where i grew up. the house my mom and dad built where i spent my baby days – the H can still be seen in the chimney. red dirt from the land where my doting grandparent’s house once stood. red clay from the yard of the house that sheltered me during my teenage years. (also took 2 irises – with current owner’s permission, of course – to my mother, the one who planted them oh so many years ago.) red clay from the first house hubbie and i designed and built and in which we raised our tiny tots and watched them take their first steps of independence as they walked from home to yea yea and car car’s house. red dirt from the approximate area where my uncle gene was killed in a freak accident just a few years before i was born. (eugene ~ me, jeanne.)

and so it begins: autoquiltography two, the next ten years.

monday past: while continuing work on operation clear-out, happened upon the only surviving piece of clothing i wore as a baby: a teensy little corduroy jacket. washed it, dried it, hung it up as delightful reminder that i was ever once that small and reliant.

tuesday past: obeying wake up thought to check decorative stitching on baby jacket, tingled with recognition that this very decorative stitching on yoke was what appears in internal image of stitching at ankles of autoquiltography one. looked at stitching through magnifying glass and noted a knot on the outside. then noted heart-shaped flowers and thrilled because my birthday = valentine’s day. then noted that there was no tag in jacket and smiled that this baby jacket was handmade by someone. just. for. me.

thursday: asked mother about it and discovered that she made the jacket and embellished it with heart-shaped flowers for her valentine girl. sketched out decorative stitching from jacket yoke, marveling at teensy little itty bitty stitches. began replicating on autoquiltography one. eventually resigned self to fact that i just cannot make stitches that small, so there will not be an exact replication. but what did i expect? glasses have adorned my face since first grade.

friday:

Technorati Tags:
cloth, quilt, sewing

won’t be long now. autoquiltography one is almost finished:

couldn’t take it any more, so ripped out all stitching on one plate at my dinner party.

doesn’t look like very much, does it? was surprised at how long it took me to rip everything out – not as long as it took to put it in not once but twice, of course. how many times have i told myself: it’s not about shortcuts or finishing quickly. it’s about pleasing myself with the work.

true, but i am so hoping that third time is the charm cause other plates are getting hungry.

~~~

finished edging on autoquiltography one. now the next fun part can begin.

reworked cup in the few minutes available tonight – the cup on the old-back-now-front/top side. added beaded saucer since granddaddy’s pet grandchild project was teaching us to sip coffee-flavored milk from a saucer. (i never acquired the taste for coffee. to this day, i don’t own a coffee pot.)

leaving steam as is cause i like it better than original idea. tomorrow we trek back across the country to home, so i’ll continue polishing up/off the star using what thread is available.
then/yesterday:

now/today:

3 days of stitching stars – count them THREE days – of stitching over previous messy stitching, ripping and snipping out stitching then just now my boy and i decide we like the backside better.

sigh.

this is a plate in my dinner party, the one for my granddaddy ballard. though the star resembles a starfish, on this plate it is actually representative of law enforcement. granddaddy was a revenue agent and a sheriff who enjoyed playing checkers, teaching grandchildren to sip coffee-flavored milk from a saucer, serving those same grandchildren vanilla ‘cream and small “co-colas” as gourmet after school snacks, playing checkers with saved co-cola bottle tops, and taking care of his favorite plowing mule.

don’t know if i’ll rip out the star yet again or just clean up stray threads and go with the wonky formerly backside version. will for sure rip out cup and redo it, but that’s a project for tomorrow ’cause tonight we’ve tickets to see the blue man group.

well, i think there’s some improvement in my edging stitching. maybe not marked but definitely some. worked on it tonight during rehearsal for into the woods, and i think it’s finally all coming back to me. (i have 16 words – not lines but words – in tonight’s rehearsal page span, so there was plenty of time for stitching.) (thanks, jude, for the reminder about rolling the edge under before stitching. i’d plumb forgotten to do that.) it’s not perfect, true, but may i never do absolutely perfect stitching. decided to leave the awkward, clumsy, just-starting-out stitches in, though. they are at annelle’s name – annelle as in steel magnolias – and somehow awkward stitches that haven’t yet hit their very own rhythm somehow fit.

p.s. okay, i cheated. made the picture a little on the fuzzy size cause stitches look better that way.

base stitching on autoquiltography one continues. thought i’d be anxious to be moving to the next phase now, ready to move forward and get this annunciated image stitched into existence . . . but not so much. will be glad when i’m to the hand-sewing stage for reasons of portability: won’t lose work time during travel. me, i see the project in its entirety when it’s complete. i see the image i’ve carried around for so many years, and i know what it speaks to me. afraid, though, that all this base stitching just makes for rather uninteresting, repetitive blog entries. thanks for your tenacious patience. will try to make it all eventually worthwhile.

i don’t have any more sense than to show you the poor results of my edging efforts today. (it’s another piece for my dinner party series.) tomorrow will undoubtedly be dedicated to stitch removal and search for that ancient instructional book of stitches.