Stuck In The Forest

Twenty-ninth in the series of six-word memoir quiltlets. Words say: "Stuck In The Forest. No Horizon"

I used one of my favorite alphabet stamp sets, actually from Disneytm. It had that fairytale lost in the forest look that I was thinking of for the words this week.

Can you "see the forest for the trees?"

Testing My Patience

28th in a year-long series of six-word memoir quiltlets. This one was made during the week I was trying to make several quilt blocks that were really challenging me.

The words say: "Block Making Tests My Patience. grrrr"

I like the contrast of the heated words with the cool colors.

Ticket To Park Lunch To Eat

No, I haven't stopped making the six-word memoir, just haven't posted them for a while. I got to the half-way point and got off-track on actually sharing the pictures of what I've made. Anyways...This one is #27 from back in July!The words say: "Ticket To Park Lunch To Eat" although the way I wrote it, I suppose it could be "Ticket to Lunch Park to Eat" almost the same thing, but not really. The stitching reminded me of the bird tracks I saw on the sand. A ticket to park at the harbor for lunch, and a label from some random piece of my son's clothing. Yes, he's still removing all labels from stuff...

Woven Rainbow

Here's another piece I've just finished, titled: Woven Rainbow. It has been in my to-finish pile for quite a while and I'm glad that I can finally call it done.

I loosely wove together strips of my hand-dyed fabrics with some beautiful commercial yarn-dyed plaids. For a while I was stuck on how to quilt this, and whether or not to make it into something wearable (since I like the colors so much).

Finally, I hit upon something that I thought worked to keep the causual, loosely woven look. Not overly quilted, still pretty unstructured and yet anchored down enough to hold together.

Wired Birdhouse

One of my newest quilts, Wired Birdhouse.
All collaged from scraps and quilted in a mostly grid-like pattern, the edge is a fuzzy, multi-colored yarn.

Pieces of old jewelry, sewn on with beads.

A bird with a tassel tail from a former mobile.

Computer guts. And an embellished shisha mirror.

Making Mixed-Media With Free Stuff

Here's my story of making something out of free stuff. All of which is from the last time I visited FabMo. I hadn't gotten around to putting it all away, so I thought I'd see what I could make by combining as much of it as I could. These painted wood pieces were interesting colors to start with, and I liked the size. But, the question came up immediately as I considered using these. How will I either cover up or utilize the hole drilled in such a strange place?

This ring of journal cover samples was irresistible, the shape, the colors, the textures. Unfortunately there is printing covering a lot of the surface, and the reverse side is uninteresting.

Several of these neutral wovens were appealing, some are wool, some linen and/or cotton. I plan to use them in dyeing and painting somehow. But one of them made it into this project uncolored.

I chose these tiles because of how they felt when I touched them in the bin of tile samples. They also reminded me of buttons.

First I glued down three of the tile buttons along one edge. That solved the hole in the wrong place problem!

Next I glued down some of the mesh-looking fabric, I made sure it was very frayed just because I like how that looks.

I found a sentence I liked out of a book and glued it to one of the journal cover sample shapes. Deciding which end is up was a little hard.

Here's how all three ended up once I was done.

I decided there needed to be one other fabric involved, so I chose this gold/red woven silk/rayon. I wanted to have mostly the same materials on each one, but with enough of a difference to make it interesting. The journal cover sample shape and size was not too easy to work with compared with the shape and size of the wood piece. So I ended up cutting them up for the other two pieces. I'm not sure that I like how the words look on this one compared to the other two. I may cover them up like this one below:

I photographed these on a background of the red/gold fabric, just because I liked how the colors all looked together.

So there's my story of making something new out of free stuff. These three are all going to hang together on my wall just as soon as I nail some hangers onto the back of them.

Supremely Seattle

The best sign I saw in Seattle.

I definitely wish we had more of these around.

The Space Needle seen through the Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum.

This is a really unique building (Frank O. Gehry designed). The monorail to nowhere goes right through it.

A Jimi Hendrix graffiti-ed guitar.

The tower of guitars was very impressive, it was playing an automated song. The boys were checking out all the guitars and at first were upset that they were all screwed together and no longer playable. Then they decided it was a pretty cool display.

Then there was this beautiful exhibit that stopped me in my tracks, of Supremes costumes from Mary Wilson's collection.

I had to take lots of pictures, it was a real thrill to see these close up.
The graphic-ness of this dress is really intriguing. The short dress behind was made out of colored acetate discs, pretty see-through, it must have looked amazing on the stage under all the lights.

I kept thinking, where in the world and how did she store all these beautiful outfits all these years? Some amazing closet I suppose.

The bodice of this one was so beautifully done, I had to get a close up. I couldn't get up close enough to see if the beads were glued or sewn on.

I remembered a lot of these outfits, especially this one with the butterfly sleeves. I guess I saw a lot of variety shows on TV when I was kid when the Supremes would be performing. I think they had clothes that I wished I had for my Barbie doll.

How do you like the bead chain sleeves? Those wouldn't last a half an hour if I was wearing them!

Granite Butterfly

I rescued this butterfly from a probable death-by-squishing, removing it from the middle of the trail in Yosemite.

Looks much happier and safer on the granite. How do you like the pattern on the wings compared to the granite flecks?

Views of Portland

Back on the road again, here are some pictures from Portland.

This knitted shade pull cord in our window looking out over the city. Such an interesting touch in this unique room in a really fun city.

We stayed at the Ace Hotel, thanks to a great recommendation (thanks Bethany and Jacob!). It was right in the Pearl district, a block away from Powell's Books (which we could see out our window). Such a book lover's mecca, we went several times, ahem. Here is a photo I snapped in the rare book room of an ancient Buddhist poem, translated and newly reprinted on kitikata paper.

It says on the top page:

" Don't deceive another one

nor despise anyone at all,

because of anger or ill-will

don't wish another pain."

and on the second page:

"Just as a mother cares for her child,

her only child, with her very life,

so you should nurture boundless care

for all the living creatures."

I guess we were in the SuperTramp Room, which you can guess from the wall decoration here.

One of the favorite features of the room was the turntable and records. We all had fun spinning some tunes, a pretty good selection. Isn't this a great re-use of an old army trunk? There was another one on casters to use as a coffee table.

I loved the grey color they used on the walls. It wasn't depressing at all, very warm, especially next to the window.

How do you like this embroidery that was in the elevator? And yes it was true, it was definitely faster to take the stairs.


The steam powered paddle boat docked on the river was really cool (and air-conditioned thankfully as it was blazingly hot that day). They still even use it sometimes. I liked the look of this control dial.


The deli next door was excellent, and had interesting brick walls. Real NY style bagels, and the fabulous and famous Stumptown coffee, locals Decemberists on the stereo, heaven!

One of the best pictures I've taken of Zach in a really long time. What do you think? Potential Album cover? That's what I'm always teasing him about since he's recording so much music lately.

We went to the Portland Museum of Contemporary Craft, a beautiful space with a thought-provoking exhibit by a Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei. I took a few pictures, but my favorite is this one of the sunflower seeds. Not actual seeds, they are porcelain, hand-painted, in a big heap on the floor.
And finally the Portland Bug. He was sitting on the top of a fire hydrant in a shady spot. I have no idea what kind of bug he actually is, but I thought he was a good representative of a lot of the Portland residents we saw, cool-looking, laid-back, and good at hanging out.

Conveniently Quilted

I added quite a bit more stitching to this work in progress from a Laura Wasilowski class (way back in 2007) on our recent driving all-over-and-back-again-vacation. It gave me something to concentrate on besides the stop and go traffic in various locations. Drives me crazy as a passenger.

There is more to do in the background, then I'll have to decide what to do with the edges of the objects. I noticed that the fusible was lifting up a bit, probably from being in my handwork project go-bag for so long (and in hot cars!). So I feel it should get anchored down somehow. But hand-stitching on the objects doesn't seem like it would really work well. There is so much color and texture already I don't want to add even more. Invisible thread zig-zagging the edges maybe?

I do marvel at all those hand stitches, done mostly in the car.