What about those Praying Crows...

I'm working up to working on a quilt.  Designs have been rolling around in my head for months.  A few weeks ago I began touching cloth.  I know I want to use this slip which has been in my stash for years.  It was among my oldest Aunts items years after she passed and right before her daughter made the decision to "let it go".  In my eyes it was the last tie we had to rural life.  But none in our family were interested in farming or even renting the land out to other farmers.

Here is the slip with the praying crows I thought I would be using.

I ex-nayed the crows for now but am making hexies as part of the design. And drawing and some writing on the quilt will be involved.  The working title is "Something Beautiful".  It is my emotional response to so much heaviness and injustice.  It will be a take on the phrase #BlackGirlMagic.  

Above is the beginning sketch for the quilt which was preceded by writing about my vision. The writing helps me navigate the competing ideas in my head and arrive at at centered intent.  It also helps me make and understand my decisions to alter things in the process.  The only time I don't journal is when I'm doing a quilt filled with mark making and exploring colour and abstract.  Those quilts have been driven by processes of moving while handling the cloth and paints and tools for marks.  Picture.narrative quilts are driven by the finished quilt and are not my favorite quilts to get out of my head.  I was kinda hoping that this one would turn but that slip (and the crows) have been whispering at me for years.

And this is a quilt with a deadline for an exhibit...maybe I need those praying crows afterall.  Hangeth in. Peace.

Episode 3 is Up.

This is episode #3.  I share a finished hat I made for an Aunt and talk about what is due to be made, including an quilt that has a deadline.  Below is the rough sketch for it and the hexies for the flowers.

The slip will be used in the quilt and it has since been dyed a burnt orange.  The crows, I'm undecided about including in this quilt.  The working title is Simply Beautiful.

Soooo Young Grasshopper....What do you really want>

Okay, something is really wrong with me...I have been aiming to go to bed since around 10 p.m.  It is now 3:41 a.m.  I can't stop knitting!!!!!!  Let me continue.  I'm a newbie knitter depending on YouTube and Craftsy.  Going Continental because I crochet (and do it a heck of a lot better).  I've wanted to cry, scream and throw these needles across the room. At one point I considered putting my small stash of knitting needles in the Goodwill box.

Just when I am about ready to call it quits, I find a new YT video and I say "this one is better, I can do this".  Right now I have 4 rows of 43 stitches and I guess I will make the dreaded boring scarf that is every beginners fate.  I purchased Pure Joy, a beautiful shawl by Joji Locatelli that I wanted to be my first knitted item but that ain't happening no time soon I think.  As for now, this young grasshopper is really quitting for the night while me and this yarn are still on speaking terms. Peace.

Rambling thoughts...

For over a month I've been going to sleep with the thought that tomorrow I'll wake up and get to the garage early and dye or marble on some fabric before the days turn cold.  I have yet to make it.  I haven't dyed, marbled, screen printed, laminated on fabric for 2 years.  All of last year was understandable.  And even some interruptions in this year, but to let the summer completely go by and now Autumn is here, I am not sure if I will or not.  I don't have and haven't had the stamina for it.  The physical stamina hasn't returned.  I have returned to sketching out new quilt ideas but now that I'm faced with wanting to really get going on a new quilt, to really engage the process again, the question of how to get it all completed by hand stitching arises.  What I really want to do is sit and make little hexies and sew them together...little hexies from my own dyed and painted fabrics.  But I have a quilt that needs to be completed by the end of December, so hand work is out of the question.  The part that I'm mostly dragging on is sitting down at the sewing machine.  Also, my mind feels cloudy when I try to approach design on the design board.  Everything feels new like I have never performed any of these tasks before.  So I just keep sitting my happy butt down to crochet or flip through crochet patterns.  I even tried to impose a "learning curriculum" on myself and the one book I keep avoiding is Ruth McDowell's book on piecing because I need to sew.

What is appealing to me about crocheting and making the hexies is not having to tax my soul to create from scratch.  Although deciphering a pattern in crochet and learning to knit has it brain boost challenges, its no where near the same.  It connects back to the stamina.  I am due to start strength training around mid-October.  I can't imagine not hooking and want to add yarn dyeing to what I do.  I already have everything I need to do that so it would be a natural fit. Just need to figure out who I am once again.

If you don't change, life will sure change you.  Peace.