Tying the knot(s)

With great relief I’d like to show you some pictures of a project that absorbed a lot of attention this summer — but that I couldn’t blog about because it would give away the surprise! At so many points over the past few weeks I was almost crazy with the effort of not writing about it, such was my excitement. The project in question was a wedding gift for my good friends J & M; now that that beautiful, joyous, delicious event has come and gone I am home free! Let the slideshow begin!

Here it is! A queen sized patchwork quilt! The key points of interest about the project are that it was a collaborative effort between myself and my good friend M — someone I was introduced to through the bride when I first moved to Toronto. And, secondly, the quilt is made almost entirely of salvaged fabrics which we sourced from both the bride and groom’s families. A large proportion of the material is old clothing of the bride’s grandmother – the very same fine dame whose fabulous costume jewellery has been finding its way to me via J for some time now. J’s mother was game to send a large box of clothing up all the way from Narragansett, Rode Island.

I laughed so hard when I opened the box: the colour spectrum ran from neon kelly green, bright fuchsia, and royal blue, to misty mint, faded pastel florals, through to the olive, tan, ochre, navy, brick, and mustard of the dozens of neckties (that had belonged to the bride’s grandfather) that were also included.

A further box of clothing from the groom’s family sealed the deal. We needed a very particular patchwork scheme to reconcile and harmonize this insane range of colours. I raided my stash for a few fabrics to fill in some of the gaps, and was happy to find that a few remnants I had tucked away from projects I had made for J in the past were a perfect fit. M added a few fabrics from her own stash and we had a workable palette. Sort of!

The key ended up being the pattern we chose, inspired by one of Kaffe Fassett’s quilts. The energetic randomness of the colourway we had been dealt needed something a bit simple and geometric to stabilize it. Repetitive without being too prescriptive, and flexible enough to accommodate the fact that we had vastly varying amounts of each colour of fabric, this log cabin pattern with blocks of varying sizes was just the ticket!

All this planning happened back in the late spring. But the summer months’ arrival meant M and I were not even going to be in the same city for very much of it.  So with the help of some graph paper and a sharpie, we set to work making a map of the quilt we could each take with us while we worked on the quilt separately. We divvied up the quilt into 7 large sections that we could then fill with the smaller log cabin blocks as we liked.  We agreed upon only a few rules – that each concentric ring of the blocks would be one colour, that blocks would be no smaller that 3″, and that we would try to randomize size and colour… and that is it.

Since we were using salvaged materials we bucked the convention of using only 100% cotton fabrics. Silk, cotton, polyester, rayon, mystery fibers – it all went into the wash on the hottest setting, and anything that didn’t survive the abuse was eliminated from the competition. The survivors were all ironed and cut it into strips of varying widths, and then divided between us so that we’d have a similar palette to work from. Our (naive) plan was to just to make our respective patchwork sections and then just piece the top together upon our reunion in August in Toronto. Easy, right?

Fast forward through a glorious summer of flights and farms and family visits, celebrations and relaxations, and a growing number of blocks accumulating on my hallway walls.

It is interesting to look back on now of the different approaches M and I took to the task of filling our assigned sections of the quilt. I arranged all my strips by colour on a hanging broom handle, then every morning as I started my day I would make one or two blocks as a warm up activity. I could make a long term habit of that! It is a good, tidy, meditative exercise to get the brain started up. Nice because the form provides enough structure to motivate and simplify the process, but not so much as to be totally prescriptive — choosing a different colour and size of fabric strips each time meant that every block was a new and exciting adventure. Fascinating to see how the concentric repetition of fabrics could harmonize colours I thought were doomed together.

first completed section

As the number of blocks grew and grew, my impression of the individual fabrics faded, and a new overall texture was created. So exciting to see how the scale, proportion of materials changed as pieces were added and rearranged. After all the fun of making the blocks however, I was faced with the mind boggling task of fitting all the randomly sized blocks I had made together! Woops.

M took a much more logical approach and mapped out completely the required number and size of the bocks she needed to fill the sections of the quilt she was responsible for. Plugging away at a constant pace, I think she realized in horror long before I did the shear enormity of the project we had set for ourselves. In my happy state of just producing blocks on a whim of whatever size I liked, it took me a little longer to hit that wall. I’m not sure who had an easier time of it in the end, since there was a quite a few panicked phone calls each way between us over the course of the summer!

Towards the end of August, M delivered to me the portion of the top she had finished – a great big 87” x 30″ strip, along with a big stack of individual blocks and all her remaining fabric, before disappearing into the wilderness (I think with a snigger) for a week of totally quilt-free camping. It was then that I threw out the original map (which had been changed and altered many times already) and resorted to ye olde tyme square dance of trial and error on the kitchen floor to make all my various sized blocks fit together (swing yer partner!)

With M and I finally both back in Toronto again, we hunkered down (literally) for an intense quilt immersion weekend to assemble the top with batting and back.

Yarn basting, before being cut and tied

binding cinnamon bun

Three long days of basting, hand tying, and binding later, with a little help from our partners, a little help from the LCBO…

relief knot-tier and chef to the rescue!

What is that lump?

Oh...

A little interference from a certain kitty, and only a few tears…

It was done!

(There were only a few more tears at the laundromat upon realizing I hadn’t set the washer to the delicate cycle, as I retied and tightened approximately one gazillion %*#$ing knots)

Oh, but then… but then…

The face that made it all worthwhile!

patchwork love

J & M: I hope it keeps your hearts warm for many, many years, my friends.

xo Anna

A shibori story

It was the last day of my visit home to Deep Cove, and a hot one, so Mom and I set up under the willow in the front yard. Dad has pruned the tree to make a green cavern underneath it, and it stays cool and lovely under there regardless of the weather “outside”. The dappled green shade there feels like a secret nest, a hallowed room.

Armed with just the techniques we’d gleaned from a quick internet search, we jumped in. Shibori is the Japanese term for a kind of resist dyeing that is popular all over the world and practiced by many cultures, but the Japanese have developed it to an artform. Basically it involves wrapping or tying thread around fabric, tightly enough that dye can’t penetrate through the places where the fabric is bound.

We tried dumbed down versions of a few traditional techniques:
arashi shibori (pole wrapped)

and kumo shibori (twisted and bound),

as well as a few improvisations of our own, binding in rocks and marbles, gathering the fabric with safety pins, and variations and combinations of stitching, pleating and gathering.

It didn’t seem worth the effort to go into town to buy some plain natural cotton for our dyeing experiment so as you can see we used some turquoise striped cotton from my Mom’s stash (!).

Traditionally shibori is done with indigo; we used Dylon. We mixed the dye up in ye olde traditional plastic garbage can so that the dye bath would be nice and deep to accommodate the arashi pole.

pvc pipe, wrapped and bound with fabric - also a good stir stick for the dye bath

Unfortunately, this red dye bath really looks like a vat of blood.

When the thread is removed at the end of the dyeing process, the paths of the thread and the crevices and valleys where the fabric was bunched up are exposed, bright white in contrast to the dyed fabric. It’s a bit of a mystery as to what the finished material will look like until it’s all unwrapped.

Cutting out the rocks and thread I had bound the fabric with

blue hands from cutting out the rocks. wear your gloves, kids!

Much like the final step in pysanky, when one melts off the wax, it’s a wonderful surprise to uncover your work in the end and see just what a lovely thing it is that you have created.

tada!!

I admit I was skeptical at first that the turquoise stripe would detract from the finished effect, but I needn’t have worried. I love the way the stripes peak out of the un-dyed portions but are very subtle in the blue dyed portion of the material. I think in fact that as long as you used something that was light-coloured overall,  you could use shibori to overdye any natural fiber print fabric you’ve got on hand (ie. cotton, linen, hemp, silk… although if you’ve got silk just kicking around I hope you’re sharing). This might be just the thing to reinvent all those metres of ugly print yardage you’ve got kicking around… (or is that just me…?)

zebra stripes, cirius clouds, ripples in the sand...

eyes, volcanoes, barnacles, nipples...

radical origami-esque geometry

eep! so pretty!

Dad think so, too.

After all the fabric was untied and hung to dry in the breeze, we all enjoyed a much deserved beverage in the green cave.

Later that evening I hopped a plane back to Toronto…

Sigh…

When I finally got around to unpacking my suitcase the next day, I unfolded my precious little shibories with such glee. With the a waft of warm cedar/grass/briny sea smell that clung to the fabric a whole day of happy memories tumbled out too.

Thanks for sharing it with me, Mom.

Man, I miss that place.

Showing up

I had intended to write this week finally about that beautiful shibori dyeing I did a few weeks ago while I was home in BC, but instead I’d like to share this TED talk with you.

When I was out in the booneys in a canoe last week I spent some time thinking about myself and my work and my rambling career path, so it was timely to come home to a friend’s recommendation that I check out this talk. I was thinking about the conversation that happens between the ourselves and our inspiration (or in Elizabeth Gilbert’s words “that genius assigned to our case”) that produces the really tingly good work. I decided that one way to look at my role in life or art is as that of an interpreter, a translator to communicate the various messages of the world/life/beauty/truths into something that those who aren’t as “fluent” in the language can recognize and be inspired by. You know with a good interpreter, in journalism for instance, when there is a good relationship between the speaker and the interpreter, you forget that what you are hearing is even a translation. The interpreter dissolves into the message, her voice becoming the speaker’s own… ah, dissapearing. The goal.

Sometimes I am successful and sometimes my ego gets in the way or I try to steer the conversation too much, or I’m just talking to myself, and that dissapearing isn’t possible. Sometimes (usually) I am the mule.

But gosh, she’s right. Just showing up for this work is pretty damn good. Certainly if I don’t show up nothing is ever possible. Does it seem to anyone else like I am continually coming back to the same point? I wonder when I will have learned this lesson…

The disciplined practice of making art is mandatory.

Everything else is optional.

Right, right. Shibori next week then.

Hoping that you have a lovely weekend.

Anna

ps. Two other fantastic creativity-related TED talks I have enjoyed, for your weekend viewing pleasure: Classical Music and Shining Eyes, and Hyperbolic Crochet and the Math of Coral

10 days in the garden

Everything has exploded green since I was away, and all my wavering faith that things will indeed grow have been assuaged.

"Sugar Snap Peas Attack! Metropolitan Toronto Overcome"

It’s always hard transitioning between home here and home there. It’s so grand in some ways to have had the freedom to move around, live in so many different places — except that now I have people that I love all over this country, and little hope that they would ever all settle in one place just for my own ease and delight. That my own family and C’s family will probably always live seperated by 3 big prairie provinces worries away at me — where does that leave us? Always apart from someones.

Deep Cove

And apart from this.  The longer I am away the more permeable I feel to how ridiculously gorgeous the coast is. And jammed full of tingly inspiration, in the rocks and tidal life crawling all over themselves, in the heavy cedar-rich hot summer air, in all my childhood memories and shapes of this place.

For instance:

Organic wool chew toy that I made for my friends B&M’s little baby girl (I should have said to you, B, that the wool is pre-felted so go ahead and toss it in the washing machine and dryer if/when needs be. And organic! So all safe for the chewing!)

And that my mother is just as keen on crafting as I am, and with very little convincing necessary at all, will take a day off work to tie dye fabric with me…

We had a go at shibori, and it was SO fun. (More on this later though – I took enough photos for a whole post of its own.)

But the reason to go home at all this time around was for one very special girl’s wedding. Congrats again, Rikki. You and D looked so very lovely.

And that enormous feathery confection pinned to her head? My work of course!

My favourite part of making this sparkly extravaganza was being able to use some of this lovely vintage costume jewelery – the rhinestone peices and the cute button in the centre of the flower. It’s still all coming from that motherlode of pretties J gave me from her grandmother.  Even though these two ladies have not met, it was a special niceness for me to symbolically connect them in this — they definitely share a love of sparkly beautiful things.

My gift to the happy couple was a picnic “quillow” — a patchwork blanket that folds up into a pillow. (Matching napkins and bamboo cutlery not pictured.)

embroidery and hearts! love!

picnic blanket unfolded

Oh, and here is another wedding quilty project too, this one for C’s cousin’s matrimonial, which we attended on the way to BC.

a patchwork table runner

(I really should have ironed that before i took that photo…)

Between this project, the quillow, and another top secret project (which it is killing me to not blog about, let me tell you that much), I have been thoroughly enamoured with quilting and patchwork this summer. I have plenty of ideas tumbling around, waiting for me to be still long enough to put them down on paper. You’ll have to take my word on that. I hope to one day have another shop update for you, but first I’m off at the end of this week for another 10 days in the garden — nature’s garden, Massasauga park — for a week of canoe camping my love.

In the meantime, I hope you too find many things to inspire you in the coming weeks.

best,

Anna

And the winner is…

Mr. Mikael, come on down! You’re the lucky winner of your very own Grower’s Pride Wallet.

Thanks for your lovely comments and well wishes, everyone!

And now I’m off for two weeks of green lush west coast family and friend extravaganza, so, ironically, my new new shop will be closed until July 3rd. Oh, timing…

Catch up with you all then!

Happy Solstice,

Anna

Grand Opening!

Wahoo! As promised, I’m happy to let you know that my Etsy shop is full of goodies and ready for business! Since I listed these items over the weekend, my stamp set has been selected for two separate etsy treasuries, too (here and here)! Nice to have some props so soon…!

To celebrate the shop opening I’d going to do another giveaway — this time for one of my new wallets:

Grower's Pride Billfold Wallet

It is made out of the awesome, graphic, webbing-infused plastic that onions and other veggies are sometimes packaged in. I’ve been playing around with the material for a while now, trying to find the right application for it — it’s just so strong and light and splashy!

I’ll draw a random lucky name on Thursday, June 18th, so be sure to leave a comment on this post before then.

Thanks, and have a lovely week!

Best,

Anna

Hands

Thank you for the bits of dream analysis that some of you have offered since my post the other day. Because it has lead to some interesting conversations and personal insights, I’d like to share a bit more of the dream, flesh it out (no pun intended) a little and see what else you folks might think of it.

Something that I left out from the brief explanation I gave with the image, that I think is important, is that I came back to get my old hands. In my dream I had grown new, healthy and strong ones to replace those ones.  Finding them was like a unexpected reunion with a some loved one I hadn’t seen in years, had thought maybe I’d never see again. It wasn’t gross to find my old hands; they were starting to rot, yes, but more like the way a peice of fruit goes soft if you forgot it in your bag for a few weeks. I think it was an indicator of how long they had been left there, forgotten. I saw the gauntness of them as that they had been neglected and abused  – starved – and felt so tender for them that they had been treated to terribly. I didn’t want to leave them behind, I wanted to protect them and keep them safe even though they weren’t really useful for anything. And I felt awed by them too,  the same kind of wonder I feel for those tiny shards of perfectly blue robbins’ eggs you sometimes find on the sidewalk, or a shed snake skin, or an empty snail shell — that there is something precious about these fragile remnants of life and growth.

I also didn’t mention the setting:

I found my hands after trespassing into a condemned apartment highrise where C and I had once lived, I had gone back to pick up a few things I thought would be useful there that we had left behind. I wasn’t expecting to find my hands, but when I did I forgot about looking for anything else, I was so overcome with emotion at finding them. There were others in the apartment building too (it was a dorm is think), they were faint aquaintances that I felt no warmth towards. I felt embarrassed that they might notice my parcel and I tried to conceal my greif and joy and releif at finding my hands from them.

An interpretation that my friend T offered after having heard a more full rendition of the dream:

The high-rise represents anonymity, serial production, and all the ugly parts of modernity.
In this particular case, hands are not related to capability or aptness but to identity.
You see them more often than you see your face, after all.

mixed media collage, september 2008

In retrospect, I was a little spooked and intrigued to find the same hands appeard in this peice I made last september, just after we had just moved to toronto.  Disembodied, pale and ghostly, glowing, reaching towards…?

This collage decorates the tin I keep my drawing pencils in. Coincidence? Maybe.

Sneak peek

So I’ve been beavering away here the past few weeks putting together a whole bunch of things for the shop. Poor little lonely cuff, sitting there all alone… she needs some company! It’s funny though, that what takes the longest isn’t actually making things to put in the shop, it’s all this photography, editing, writing, arranging, etc that accumulates around the making, the work of actually translating these beautiful things on my desk into images and words that might cause you to fall in love with them yourself.

Anyway, here is a little sneak preview of a few of the things for the shop that I’m most proud of, for you my loyal fans…

Expect a proper post and shop update in the next few days. I think at that point I’ll do a little giveaway too, to celebrate the “official” opening of the shop. (Finally!)

In the meantime, I hope you all are having a lovely sunny June tuesday.

(I’ll have to post some pictures of my various gardens here soon too — everything is suddenly green and lush and full of promise…)

Best,

Anna

May

I’ve been neglecting you, I know. I’ve been preoccupied – in the good way.

Here are some scenes from the last few weeks.

sharpening pencils, a good way to start the day

an etsy shop update in the making

the urban forager's lunch - wild lambsquarters, sorrel, dandelion, mustard, dill and chive flower salad

a grey evening rainbow over the city

and

an image from last night’s dream, interpretations welcome:

i dreamt i came back to get my hands

they had been amputated at the elbow

they were emaciated and starting to rot

i felt so sad and tender for them

i wrapped them up in a cloth like a baby

so no body would see

Inspiration

Thanks, spring. Keep up the good work.