I've been traveling and busy with family and friends, as well as New Hampshire pet and house chores, these past two and a half weeks. Things are slowing down a bit now that I'm back in China, and I'm going to continue this blog-free time for a bit while I catch my breath and gather my jet-lagged wits. It's quite a transition.
View from New Hampshire sewing table:
View from Beijing sewing table:
My boro course is getting to me--I can't pass the scrap basket without thinking of a thrifty, useful new project. I sat down to start a "blues" version of "reds" but soon realized that my blue scraps, mostly from the wonky block quilt I made a few weeks ago, were bigger than my red scraps, and thus something larger should evolve.
This is an oversize table mat--about 22 x 15. (The blues aren't really as neon as they seem in this photo. ) I machine stitched random scraps on to a light muslin foundation, then zigzagged over the edges again. I layered the patchwork with batting and a medium weight muslin and hand quilted, sashiko style, on the diagonal. The binding is pieced from scraps. Now all l I need to do to is trim, turn, and hand stitch the binding to the back.
I may decide more sashiko quilting is needed after future washings, but for now, it's okay.
Meanwhile, I'm ironing backwards (those legs really get in the way!) because I dropped my wonderful heavy hot Chinese iron a few days ago and did this:
A bit of this and a bit of that...all over the place these days. Lap projects, mostly. Good for folks on crutches! Like me.
A new bird with fabric from Shimla, India, a bit of sashiko on 8" square "snack mats" and a new pincushion. Yes, it's a tuna can pin cushion, because I needed a pin cushion, and I had tuna for lunch one day. So retro-craft, I know. In case you're wondering (as I was) pincushion may also be written as pin cushion.
Eyes or no eyes on this birdie? Usually I have an immediate sense, but not this time. I may be a bit birded out just now.
The wonkies are finished--the wonky blocks, that is!
For this quilt -- blocks on bed for arranging -- as conceived in this sketch: Wonky Blues quilt.
For this quilt -- blocks on bed for arranging -- as conceived in this sketch: Wonky Blues quilt.
Dyed sashiko yarn on muslin face with unraveled wool thread for earrings. A bit of fun today--inspired in large part, I think, by the totally engaging Contemporary Boro 2 online workshop I'm taking with Jude Hill of Spirit Cloth.
Snack time!
Eileen Otis: Markets and Bodies: Women, Service Work, and the Making of Inequality in China
Joan M. Erikson: Wisdom and the Senses: The Way of Creativity
Julie Salamon: Wendy and the Lost Boys: The Uncommon Life of Wendy Wasserstein
Leslie T. Chang: Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China
Susan Brownmiller: Seeing Vietnam: Encounters of the Road and Heart
"part reportage, part impassioned memoir, part serendipitous adventure..." from the cover.
Kristin Nicholas: Colorful Stitchery: 65 Hot Embroidery Projects to Personalize Your Home
Contemporary ideas, clear instructions
Faith S. Holsaert, Martha Prescod Norman Noonan, et. al.: Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC
Stirring, fascinating essays by six leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. The collection is "immeasurable as a historical document and a blueprint for ongoing national and international struggles for human rights. We must take our cue from the lessons they teach and tighten our grip on freedom's plow, pushing on, regardless," writes Darlene Clark Hine, coauthor of The African American Odyssey.
Mark Spragg: Where Rivers Change Direction
Spragg's vivid, meditative memoir conjures images of my early childhood in Colorado, fishing or exploring on my grandparents' or uncle's ranches. It's a time capsule of place and male coming-of-age in a mostly forgotten, living close to the land and animals, way of life.
Susan Briscoe: Japanese Taupe Quilts: 125 Blocks in Calm and Neutral Colors
The original hardcover is shown here. The book I have is a soft cover with the same image, but a slightly different title.
Susan Briscoe: Japanese Quilt Blocks
Modern Japanese quilting using Eastern and Western techniques. Contains 125 blocks from several different traditions, including applique and sashiko. Terrific resource for any quilter.
Thomas Savage: The Power of the Dog : A Novel
I've just started this (March 26). Annie Proulx writes, in her afterward, "Gripping and tense...a work of literary art."
Orhan Pamuk: Snow
If you're at all interested in exploring Turkey's past and future through the lens of riveting literature, this is a must read. It's the first book I've read by Pamuk, but it won't be the last. Atwood and Updike had this to say: “Not only an engrossing feat to tale-spinning, but essential reading for our times. [Pamuk is] narrating his country into being,” Margaret Atwood, The New York Times Book Review. “A major work…conscience-ridden and carefully wrought, tonic in its scope, candor, and humor…with suspense at every vortex…. Pamuk is [Turkey’s] most likely candidate for the Nobel Prize,” John Updike, The New Yorker.
Le Ly Hayslip: When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Vietnamese Woman's Journey from War to Peace (Plume)
A woman's memoir of the Vietnam War (and the basis for Oliver Stone's film Heaven & Earth). Author and activist Hayslip currently runs non-profit organizations to help rebuild Vietnam. I'm reading this in preparation for my trip there next month (April 2011).
Nicole Krauss: Great House: A Novel
Intriguing style and format. Haunting, philosophical, memorable. A collection of seemingly short stories that begin to weave together mid-novel, forming a complex whole by the end.
Julie Mazel Sussman: I Can Read That: A Traveler's Introduction to Chinese Characters
Accessible and useful. Thanks to Carol (Quilt Fever)for recommending this book--it's a great find.
Yoshiko Jinzenji: Quilting Line and Color: Techniques and Designs for Abstract Quilts
Beautiful, comprehensive exploration of positive/negative space, color, design, and balance with complete instructions for 30 projects. This is the book that inspired my "Blue Moons" series.
Rose Tremain: Trespass: A Novel
remain is a prize winning author (Orange Prize, Whitbread Award) living in Norwalk, England. This is her latest novel, and the first one I've read. It's about how "the lives of two pairs of aging siblings converge and overlap in a lushly neglected valley in the Cévennes region of southern France" (Booklist).
Lynne Sharon Schwartz: Disturbances in the Field: A Novel
sturbances was published in 1983, with a paperback edition published in 2005. "I have not been so wholly taken into an aura, a field, since I began being hypnotized by Dostoevski and Tolstoy and George Eliot..." writes Max Apple. This philosophical novel follows the lives of four women (one main protagonist) and a couple men from their college days at Barnard and Columbia in the 1950s.
