Lettergirl

Handwritten poetry.

I usually forget to take photos of my custom handlettering projects, but this summer I made a point to capture most of them.  Here's a poem I wrote up for a doting new grandmother (and poet!).

Custom t-shirt art.

What can I say?  I loved working on this project!  You may remember the heart artwork I created for Cathy & Greg about two years ago in honor of their tenth wedding anniversary.  This time around, Cathy and her sister worked with me to create this word cloud artwork celebrating her mom's birthday.  The outline is the shape of the lake where they've enjoyed summers at the family cabin; inside are words that represent a full and happy life.  They used the art to make t-shirts that everyone wore at the party.  Happy Birthday Mimi!

Bucket hat.

Considering how jam packed I knew this summer would be, I didn't plan to get many stitching projects completed...but fitting in a little bit here and a little bit there has been surprisingly productive. (Granted, all the projects have been a bit little too.)

This bucket hat uses the same stencil as my keyhole tank, but the hat pattern comes from Alabama Studio Sewing & Design (the final book in the Alabama Chanin studio series).  I recommend making the pattern at least 10% smaller than the pattern provided in the book.  I made a sample first with no embellishment, directly from the pattern, and then made this one smaller -- and if I make another, I'll do it even smaller as the cotton jersey tends to stretch with wear. 

A journey recorded.

I think I mentioned a few weeks ago all the unusual projects I've been blessed with lately.  Earlier this summer I had the great pleasure to work with Destiny on a map detailing her journey home...and back home again.  I tried to infuse each stitch of the embroidered route with good intentions for her adventure.  And I'm so grateful she shared the finished (frame) project with me.

The inscription reads:  Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.  (Olivery Wendell Holmes)

Keyhole shell with applique.

I shared the beginning of this project here.  It started as a long-sleeve shirt, but when I looked at the photo I had taken earlier without the sleeves, that kind of grew on me.  It helped a lot to pin the pieces onto Purnah, so I could add darts in the right places.

My favorite bit is the hidden snap at the keyhole neckline:

Seams for this one are on the outside, felled to one side and stitched twice:

I wore this to the opening on Friday night (with a plain black maxi skirt), minus a half a dozen of the applique pieces on the front since I wasn't quite done yet.  I was frustrated at being in the same position again (almost done).  Will I never learn?  I think it's time to embrace that part of my nature....

Oliver skirt, part 2.

I decided to add a bird to my skirt:

And I thought she needed a friend:

Then the back looked a little lonely without any birds, so I added one more down at the hem:

The paint is a combination of several colors of Lumiere.  Honestly, Jacquard paints are not my favorites, but the flow of the Lumiere is nicer than the solids.  There's also a little Setacolor mixed in (which is my favorite).

Here is what the skirt says, from the poem The Summer Day by Mary Oliver:

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.

The next line of the poem is "Tell me, what else should I have done?" and when I started the skirt, I'd planned to screenprint that line on it, smaller, and in several places.  It seemed fitting for my, "I should be doing more to help my community!" attitude.  Then in the middle of working on the skirt, something came up around our house that I am stilll trying to get my head around (and which I'll write about more completely later) -- and which also explains my sporadic blog posts lately.  Now the poem has a different meaning for me, and I am focusing instead on the word blessed, which I have embroidered over to create a little subtle texture:

I like that it's easy to miss that embellishment on the word blessed, unless you're really paying attention.

Oliver Skirt.

I've been working on a new skirt, from fabric I printed at Spoonflower.  The background is printed from a sheet of scrapbook paper:  I scanned a small piece of an ordinary looking blue/green paper and enlarged it to fit the entire yard of fabric.  It's amazing to me how that ordinary paper became so pixelated when it was enlarged.  A happy accident!

I wasn't as thrilled with how my lettering also looked pixelated, so I used a finepoint Tee Juice marker to add a second layer to the writing.

I added another layer of color by stenciling these leaves asymmetrically on the skirt.  (That also helped bridge the gap where the side seam falls.)

And then it still wasn't quite right...so after letting it sit in a bag out of sight for a few weeks, I started stitching around the stencils and adding a few beads here and there:

This part is extremely labor-intensive, so it may be awhile before I share the finished skirt.  I'm hoping to have it done in time for my upcoming group show at the Textile Center:  either to wear or to exhibit!

Spring envelopes.

The forecast calls for up to a foot of snow (or possibly only a few inches of freezing rain), more winter than we've had all winter!  And with the addressing of wedding envelopes on my horizon, I thought it was a good time to put a little spring in my step....

Reverse applique sundress, part 2.

I've gotten a little farther on the sundress I first wrote about in this post.  (The top is two layers of jersey, with beading and reverse applique.)

Pinning it onto Purnah, I've realized I'll need to make a few adjustments before I sew the final seams.  I don't know if that's because I made the dress from knit, and the original pattern calls for woven, or if my body just requires more darts, but it definitely gaps a bit here and there when I pin it together.

The bodice is done except for the little tiny beads that I'm adding all around the neckline, a combination of Japanese Toho seed beads, bugle beads, and Czech glass beads:

It took most of an episode of Glee to get that little patch of beads stitched on.  Here's hoping I can get the rest of it stitched before summer!

Messenger Series No. 1.

Remember this project?  I had it printed at Spoonflower:

The color was a bit washed out, so I overdyed it in a mix of robin's egg and turquoise:

Then I stitched around each phrase, embellishing the empty blocks with free motion embroidery:

Ta da!

(photos 3 & 4 by Nell Ytsma)

The words on this piece are from a poem by Phillip Larkin; I studied Larkin's book The Whitsun Weddings in college, had written this poem out with a fountain pen, and found it tucked in a book in the attic (bleached, faded, and all) at the time I was considering what words I wanted to use on my project.  Read "Love Songs in Age" here.

P.S.  My winter newsletter will have to wait till next week!