Cloth & Clay Days

My sewing this summer has been neither very good, nor very bad but rather one constant work after another in progress with little hurdles and tiny successes but constant learning along the way. I’ve so many moments though of enjoying the making or just plain pleasure in the doing. While getting ready for Hawaii, I bagged up the vegetable patch wall quilt which just needs its binding sewn to finish and the mermaid quilt which I’m going to hand draw waves to then hand quilt since its borders and strips have already been stitched in the ditch.             

I can also bring this bag with me to a park this Saturday with my meetup sewing group to sit under redwood trees, stitch, and socialize. This gathering will be the first in-person meeting I’ll be attending since the pandemic closed us down. Before clay club yesterday, I finished this quilted pillow.                                  

I wish I had begun my quilting career with pillows and crib blankets—so much easier to wrestle these projects in a domestic sewing machine, which reminds me to see if I can make an appointment to use a long arm and finally quilt my king size patchwork. And I’ve finally seized on an idea on what to do with these two panels.                                     

I’m going to appliqué text separately on these two panels: PLAY and IMAGINE above the parade of children and animals. And then in between will be rows of more appliquéd text: MAKE SANDCASTLES; CLIMB TREES; BUILD FORTS. Maybe the text of RIDE BICYCLES and and FIND FRIENDS AND ADVENTURES too. It depends what length the quilt needs to be. I want the text to be a mulberry or dark burgundy color, and I’ll make a border of pinwheel patches in the same color palette found on these two panels. I know I’ve had these panels for at least five years, and they were going to be coordinating pillows for a family tree quilt that I sewed for a niece who’s now almost 6 years old, but she’s sister to a 2-year-old (or maybe she’s 3?) and is rambunctious and for whom this quilt will be apropos. And then it was time to haul boxes of fabric to my storage area on campus and ceramics club too.                       

I actually made the lotus flower (or is it a succulent?) last Saturday and so spent an hour constructing this cylinder which ended up taller and narrower than I’d intended. I had wanted to place the succulent on the outside of the pot, but it was way too big. And so I made a lid to stick the plant on top of. The plant is Bmix, and the pot is Venus clay. I put the whole project in a damp box so I can continue to refine the flange before attaching it to the lid. After I return from Kauai. See this ceramic greenware in two weeks.