Roses, 5

Playing around with the leaves.

I happened upon this lacy cotton fabric from a flea market blouse hiding in my stash. 

How could I have forgotten this fabric? I snipped out several of the leaves from it.

Then on to the words, which I had decided to do with freehand machine sewing.

This made for an exhilarating adventure. The pink snippets seemed to fit. The yellow snippets were too much. Then, the tails of thread caught my attention so I couched them down.
I was feeling rather pleased with myself, looking at this photo on the computer screen. Then it hit me. Crap-eau (frog in French). I forgot a couple of letters in "documenting". Back to the machine.

OK, all's well that ends well. However, when working with raw edges exposed, one cannot afford to make too many mistakes. The fraying fuzzied things up a bit.

And I rather liked the back. Looking very sketchy.

The Labyrinth, 3

OK, so now the Wing Cloth has the Labyrinth on Crete built by Daedalus, Icarus's father--

the guy who built the wings. 

One way in, no way out. A cage, a prison, vs. flying, freedom.

Now the problem is that the Labyrinth has unbalanced the whole composition. So I've dug myself into a hole and now I'm going to have to dig myself back out again.

After cutting the strips in the right corner with my mother's marvelously sharp Gingher scissors, I was inspired to make the effort to find a place to sharpen scissors in Tunis. I asked in my favorite notions shop and they sent me to a small shop in Tunis that sells knives and sharpens scissors as well as knives. For thirty dollars I had 9 pairs of scissors sharpened. My joy knows no limits!

Had to test them immediately and realized that I have been working with dull scissors for about the last 25 years. Except for the large Singer scissors on the left, I inherited my mom's scissors. The black handled scissors are made by Wiss and must be at least 50 years old. And when I hold these scissors, I remember my mom madly slashing fabric and zooming away on her machine. Thanks, Mom.

Sketchbook: Roses, 4

Oh, man! I think I'm in love with pink.

This is going much slower than it should, but I'm savoring each step. 

I just lay down a few pieces and stitch them down. Can't decide about the snippets, whether to add them or not. Will have to see at the end.

And as Nina Marie has kindly invited me to "Off the Wall Fridays" over at her blog, the roses have traveled over there today, too.

The Labyrinth, 2

Icarus's view (while flying) of the Minotaur's Labyrinth on Crete that Daedalus built.
The weaving was a pest because the strips are so thin and tend to unravel.

The entrance to the Labyrinth is on the left. 

I've already been doing running stitch throughout to try to get it to hold together.

More stitching will be required. I wonder if I need to back this up. Will consider that later.

Roses, 3

Just playing around while pinning on pink fabric. Little snippets kept falling all over so I decided to go with it.

The snippets aren't attached yet. Not sure I'll keep them--something to be decided at the end. The idea of snippets seemed so appropriate for a blog named "Multicolored Snippets."

Excavating. Thinking of drawings in old sketchbooks. Yipes! from the 90s!

It would seem that roses appear on my path often. Childhood memories of my grandmothers' rose gardens, of the rose gardens in Oregon and the Portland (Oregon) Rose Parade.

The four rose bushes in my garden must be 30 years old and are fortunately very sturdy varieties. Can't say I take good care of them, but they generously put forth their luxuriant blooms a couple times a year.

Until I began the Snippets blog to document my work/play in fabric, I couldn't really see any crossover between mediums, that is, between sketching and fabric quilts. I'm beginning to see this more clearly.

The Labyrinth, 1

The lower right hand corner of the Wing Cloth was destined for the Minotaur's Labyrinth that Daedalus constructed. However, I had trouble figuring out how to do it. So I worked on the tea-dyed sides instead.  A maze of needleturn appliqué in several colors seemed feasible, but didn't really seem to fit. Then, I saw Jude Hill demonstrating her technique of weaving fabric, and using that technique to blend the edges of two overlapping pieces. Bingo.

I pulled out the basting to free the two layers 

and got out my mother's Gingher scissors that she kept in the original box.

It was like cutting butter.

However the strips seemed to wide for a bird's eye view.

And as those Gingher scissors worked so well, I cut smaller strips.

OK, the strips are the right size, but miniscule. Now for the weaving--what a mess.

On My Sewing Table

I seem to have pink scattered all over. And there's my little ol' Singer 248.

All that fabric is from flea market clothing. I went every Saturday for years, but, I haven't been in a long time. Prices have gone up, and I really have a good deal of fabric. A nice palette of colors.

Still pinning. Lots of fuzzy bits floating around. 

Stitching Pomegranates, 6.

Getting close to the end of stitching the pomegranates, however the leaves remain and more outlining.

This one is a branch towards the top of the tree.

Last one of the pomegranates to go under the needle tonight. 

I'm still reflecting on how to get the branches into a whole tree with the background. I'll figure it out when I get there. I have faith that it will work out...

Color Study: Brown.

On the Wings Cloth, brown seems unappealing to me. I've been resisting brown. Maybe, just maybe I should re-consider brown, look closer.  Of course, I resist collecting, which is a good thing. I have too much "stuff", but there remains the garden with lots of space. Sometimes things come together quite unintentionally.

The brown snails have been a pest, however, one day it occurred to me that their shells are striking. I do like spirals. Movement. A paradox, going towards the middle, the movement stops abruptly. Going out it unfurls.

So when I find an empty one now, I put it on the scale on the patio table outside the kitchen door with shells, a fossil rock and rusty metal. As a collection, the spirals are mesmerizing and the variety of browns is pleasing. This setup might be good as a still life, something to draw with the addition of a bit of watercolor. However, I'm thinking it would take more time than I really want to spend.

A Flurry of Wings.

Following Jude Hill's example, I sewed a few simple patchwork wings, squares and triangles, with two different pink fabrics, one light, one darker, and the blue pinstripe. Each print has several secondary colors.

The blue pinstripe of the patchwork wings will blend into the background. 

I'm liking this better now, with the addition of the wings that blurs the straight lines a bit. Used scraps of the tea-dyed fabric to make the wing shadows. I have left the lower right hand corner of the brown strips unstitched for the moment. 

This is developing into a bird's eye view of land and sea, but not just any bird's eye. This is Icarus looking down from his high altitude with joy and exhilaration, just before he realizes that he should have listened to his father, Daedalus, and not gone so close to the sun, just before the plunge. I'm trying to figure out how to put in the Minotaur's labyrinth that Daedalus built on Crete in the lower right hand corner. For Daedalus was not innocent. Although he sought to escape to freedom, he himself had built a strange prison or cage for another creature, albeit a monster. How to express this mix of darkness and light?

Stitching Pomegranates, 5

They're all the same, yet every one is different.

Another one goes under the needle tonight. The sleeve shape remains. 

This is one of the larger sketches

Roses, 2.

I decided to darken the background further by working in a tile style with triangles. Liking triangles a lot, lately. Or maybe I've liked triangles for a long time, they keep coming up.

The beginning of "pin and stitch". Used a dark maroon thread, complement of green, on a black solid, a black with dark brown pattern, and a batik fabric. The maroon shows up well.

I'm going to try writing directly with the machine this time instead of writing with a colored pencil first.

The triangles emphasize the grid; I'll write on top of the triangles.

Stitching Pomegranates, 4

I have a total of 11 sketches of branches. This will go on for quite some time. Little by little.

I machine stitched patches to the white background that was originally a shirt in order to fill the background in a bit. Will probably hand stitch into the background, maybe do some reverse appliqué as well.

To stitch next. The armhole shape becomes part of the overall design.

I've already laid down the red thread.

This is also an experiment with different fabrics and how they take the color of the threads. The dark pomegranate will show off the lighter colors very well, but may require some extra work for the middle colors. I'm wondering if it will balance out ok with the other pomegranates or create a hole.

Stitching the Land

I continue to stitch the land for the Wing Cloth.

I like the stitching.

It's the colors that I don't care for.

Well, particularly the tea-dyed brown.

From experience I know that colors I find ugly can be extremely useful when mixed with other colors.

I machine sewed the sides to the central panel instead of hand sewing them because I was longing for some nice, straight lines.

At this point, I said to myself, "This is the worst thing I've EVER done." Admittedly, that is a good sign because it means I'm exploring new territory. Painful all the same. No idea where this is going.

Needleturn: First Steps

A blouse/tunic that started to have holes serves as a canvas. I have one front finished.

The other side. This is the first step: deciding which way the labyrinth will flow and then with safety pins, attaching strips and pieces of fabric.

I considered working from the top down, but I have a pocket placed at the bottom (the dark maroon). So I'll be working from the bottom up. I can always add on other strips later, so length doesn't matter too much.

















Sometimes I look at the fabrics and have no idea where to start. The trick is to begin at the easiest point of entry. In this case, the lower left edge seemed the most accessible.

Once I had stitched down the far left edge, I could take out the safety pin and begin cutting the dark red. Then I cut and stitched down a short strip of the blue.

Then I turned back the bottom of the blue, which was still unstitched, to get at the maroon and stitch it down.

Once the maroon was stitched down, I went back to stitching down the dark blue.

As I stitched on this corner last night, I remembered that I really do like to do this and prefer appliqué stitching over embroidery, for some reason. Possibly because it's a bit faster. Thoughts of a large labyrinth, a majestic and monumental piece, have crossed my mind lately, but for the moment a number of other pieces must be finished. Like the pomegranate tree.