September, November, Falling, Brew

Yep, I am cheating here, combining two words into one piece.  So shoot me.

The main leaves in this piece were created by pounding leaves with a small rubber mallet until they left their natural dye shapes on my fabric.  This is a lot of fun, though it's right noisy and can leave one's arm and shoulder muscles trembling if one goes at it too long at a stretch, but it's a great way to work out any residual anger and frustration that one might be harbouring.  The additional leaves were quilted on with 30 wt. Sulky Blendable threads, after I'd quilted the background and decided that enough wasn't enough.  

wicked storm brewing
falling leaves swirl on the wind
dancing down to die

August - Flow

This one is meant to be some sort of statement about how many places on earth are having water scarcity problems due to overdevelopment and changing weather patterns.  The binding is something new - couched satin cord.  I like the way this turns out for these little pieces - so much less bulky than traditional bindings, no matter how narrow they are.  And it's way quicker.  Another fine thing, that.

And yes, I do own a calendar.  I just keep forgetting to turn the pages.

when the rains don't come
flowing rivers all run dry
how then will we live?

July : Whirlwind

July's moon is called the Thunder Moon in most North American cultures. Appropriate that, given the prevalence of thunderstorms to dampen the fiery heat. Our prompt word for July arrived just days before the derecho. Whoever heard of such a thing? I personally had no damage other than some small limbs in the yard and a couple of hours of scariness. While a derecho is not so much a whirling wind, but more of a straight wind, I knew I wanted to try to make one.

The source image from the National Weather Service can be found HERE. (scroll down to almost the bottom of the page)

I tried making it with fabric. Twice. Both failed. It was too clunky or something. Then I tried sketching in the storm lines with pearle cotton in the bobbin, something I'd never done before. I like the technique and the textural effect, but the piece itself is weird. I thought maybe I could quilt it right, but that didn't happen either.

Even if I hadn't included the moon, it would still be weird. I haven't bound it. I don't like it enough to waste any more time or thread on it. Some things just aren't meant to be. I do like my background fabric though. The black streaks are meant to be flying debris.

Just for the sake of discussion though, if one of you had been trying to make this derecho map, how would you have gone about it?

July's Thunder Moon
brings daily bad storm warnings
still, it does not rain

then the derecho
speeding down from the northwest
brings rain, at great cost

June: Strawberry Moon

Yeah, I'm late. Really late. Later than I've ever been before. You don't want to know.

In Algonqian lore, June is known as the strawberry moon. Unlike other months, there are no alternative names in North American cultures. Here in Virginia, strawberries used to peak in June. Now it's more like May.

It took me about forever to work out how to make the strawberries, since I don't have any photos, so in the end, I just looked a a bunch of other people's strawberry pictures and went for it.

My little quilt is collaged and fused and machine quilted. I decided to try an over layer of tulle because of the serate edges of the leaves and the fraying of the red fabric. I tried various colors of tulle and settled on red in the end, since it gave a pink glow to my moon, and weird as it was to think about, I rather liked the effect.

This piece is 8 3/4 x 7 3/4. It was originally 8 3/4 by 11. There were the most wonderful moonlit reflections off the clouds, and a whole full moon too. You'll have to imagine it. Tulle melts, given a way too heavy hand with the iron in pressing the binding to the front.

under the June moon
strawberries are ripening
sweet treat for breakfast

May - Awakening

The May full moon is most commonly called the flower moon, though a close second is the planting moon, which seemed appropriate for our current word prompt of awakening. Other names are milk moon, likely referring to animal mothers producing food for their newly born offspring, and the hare moon. Judging from the rabbits running amok in my front field, that seems appropriate. There were two out there this evening playing leapfrog. Or at least that's what it looked like. I expect they were playing at mating.

I am a gardener, of both flowers and food. It always intrigues me to see the power of a tiny dried up looking seed when it comes to life and pushes its sprout up through the soil. Beans in particular, which is what this one is if you didn't recognize it, disturb the dirt to the point where it looks like someone's been out there with a hoe.

This was made from a photograph, which I got by lying in the wet grass. Absolute dedication. What do you reckon the neighbors thought? Do I really care? I printed an enlargement, traced the outlines for a pattern and fused the fabric parts to make the whole. The pebble quilting in the dirt part is meant to illustrate the disturbed earth. That, and I have this thing for the look of pebbling, so I'm trying to practice it at every opportunity. I think I'm getting better at it.

I have had a hard time with the haiku, it's still not quite right. If I come up with better word imagery, I'll edit at it, so don't think you've lost your memory if it becomes different.

mysterious shapes
awaken in the moonlight
thrusting earth aside

April - Pink Moon

Another moon.  I've always wanted to do a series on the traditional full moons, so I reckon that's what you'll be seeing here now, since there won't be any more prompt words.

The Native American name for April's full moon is Pink Moon, called such after the wildflowers that bloom around this time of year in the east.  Other names are Sprouting Grass Moon, Egg Moon and Fish Moon, all of which reflect what's going outside in the spring.

I have cheated a bit on this one, in that I made this piece in early March and have written the current haiku for it.  In February, I took my first class at Quilt University, a class called Dyeing with Tea and Spices, taught by Marjie McWilliams.  It was a lot of fun playing with what was already in my kitchen to create colors on fabric and I've learned enough to be experimenting with what's growing out in my yard.  Over the weekend it was dandelion greens, which produced a fine pale yellow.  Intrigued?  The class will come around again in mid-July.

This was my final class project and all the fabrics in it were dyed by me.  The pink gradation was made from Tazo Passion tea.  Those blue birds were probably from berries, or perhaps red cabbage.  The yellow and greens could have been from a lot of things.  I didn't write it down, I was busy making it out of my new fabrics.

in the warm moonlight
spring blossoms cast a pink glow
as birds soar to mate

March - Glimmer

This is the result of experimenting with my Inktense pencils.  The rainbow colors are a bit bright...

the dark sky brightens
as the storm ends, a rainbow -
a glimmer of hope

February - Moon

Many cultures have names for their full moons, and in North America the February full moon is most commonly called the snow moon. Alternate names are Bone Moon or Hunger Moon, due I suppose to all that snow keeping the game inaccessible while the previous year's harvest stores are dwindling.

The snowy fields and the moon are hand appliqued, and the snowflakes are hand embroidered.  Lucky that no two showflakes are ever alike.

february moon
snowflakes falling to the earth
each one different

The strip piecing in the upper left began as an trial of a free rotary cutting and curved piecing method I ran into last summer.  When the small bit I'd done and the cut fabrics came out from beneath the piles on the cutting table at the new year's clean up, I thought I'd play with it some more and see where it went.  There was no plan ever.  The quilt told me what it wanted and that's what it got.

This quilt is 9 x 11.5" and is totally machine done.  I also tried a new facing method, which was easy but I still come out with those weird curved corners.  Leftover traditionalist that I am, I want those corners to be square. 

I have also decided not to write the haiku on the quilt unless the design would be enhanced by the words.  I struggled with that all last year.  My handwriting is so sloppy,  that  no matter how hard I tried,  I felt I ruined some of my pieces with the lettering.

The original haiku I wrote for January was about the exhilaration to be found in working with a new method or idea:

experimenting
trying something different
exhilarating!

But I liked what turned out so much that I thought it deserved a haiku of its own.  I want to make a larger piece like this, only I would satin stitch those fused rocks first, instead of quilting them on.


exhilarated,
a river rushing to sea
wears away rough rocks

January: Interim Exhilaration

This is not my "real" haiku piece for the month, I'm still working on that one.

Despite my venturings into machine quilting, I never want to be without a quilt on the frame.  Hand quilting is so relaxing every evening.  This project was begun last fall and has been on the frame for almost a week.  I meant to take a picture of the completed top before it went on the frame, but I got impatient and forgot.  I thought the occasion deserved a haiku.

the piecing finished
a new quilt is on the frame
exhilarating!

December - Yule

from the bright yule fire
sparks rising, becoming stars
to light the new year

November - Gnarled

ancient catalpa
gnarled witness to history
leaves whisper secrets



Our prompt word immediately brought to mind the gnarly bark of the catalpa tree which I have photographed many times.  Chatham Manor, built around 1770, stands just across the river north of Fredericksburg, VA and served as a Union headquarters and hospital.  In front of the house are two catalpa trees, known as "witness trees", which were planted before the Civil War.

To learn more:
Chatham Manor
Chatham Catalpa Tree

The background image in my piece is from my own photograph, transferred onto a batik with Lesley Riley's TAP paper.  The quilt measures 11.5 x 14.5.

October - Canopy

My 10x6" quilt is meant to depict the rain forest canopy, and that flash of crimson represents all the exotic species to be found up there.  The leaves were cut from my collection of leaf fabrics and are not fused, only glued enough to hold them in place for the stitching.  I thought the frayed edges might make them look wilder...or something.


in the canopy
high above the forest floor
a streak of crimson

Hungarian Rhapsody

The first thing that came to mind when considering September's Rhapsody prompt was the Hungarian Rhapsodies by Franz Liszt, probably some leftover fragment of my years of piano lessons.  While thinking about the musical theme, I was also making up the grocery list for the coming week and somehow Hungarian Goulash, which has paprika as the defining ingredient, entered the mix.

I used an inkjet transparency transfer method with gold Lumiere paint to create the background.  The piano keys were done with CorelDraw, Photoshop and good old pencil and paper, when I couldn't get the computer to make just what I was after, then printed onto fabric and enhanced with colored pencils.  The pepper shape was from a photograph and just the perfect bit of fabric.  I left off the haiku words, as it seemed busy enough already.  The whole is machine quilted - the lines are meant to represent sound waves.   I tried a facing for the edge finish, which is certainly clean and easy, though the corners aren't sharp enough to suit me.  Next time.  This one is small - only 9x6.5".


music fills the air
expect the unexpected
rhapsody in life

Journey - Seeing the Elephant

No one knows the exact origin of the phrase "seeing the elephant" in conjunction with a journey.

Hindus consider it a good omen to see an elephant when one is traveling.  In the Hindu pantheon, Ganesha, who is depicted with the head of an elephant, is the patron of beginnings, the arts and sciences, and writing.  Ganesha is revered for his ability to remove obstacles, though he has been known to place those same obstacles in the way of those who need to be deterred from the paths they have chosen.

Historically, Alexander the Great defeated an army mounted on elephants during his campaign in the Indus Valley in the 3rd century BC.  The ancient Greeks used elephants in war, as did the Seleucids of eastern Macedonia and the Egyptian Ptolemaic dynasties.  The Carthaginian general Hannibal drove an army of elephants over the Alps in 218 BC, though most of his elephants didn't make it.

In these early encounters, those who "saw the elephant" would have likely been awed and frightened, unless of course, they were those fielding the war elephants.

Charlemagne was intrigued by stories of the massive beast and managed to acquire one of his own for his palace at Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle).  People came from all over to see this marvelous animal.

In America, there were traveling circuses which often included an elephant, and the inhabitants of the towns which these shows visited would ask each other if they "had seen the elephant".

When American settlers began to move west in the early 1800s, their letters and diaries often mentioned "seeing the elephant".  In the early years of the westward migration, the phrase denoted excitement at seeing new places and anticipation of a better life ahead.  In later years it became more common as a description of discouragement when the hardships of their journey turned out to be more than they could bear, or when their destination eluded them.  Indeed, many of these immigrants turned back in their defeat.  During the Civil War, soldiers would refer to a battle they had been in, or an upcoming one, as "seeing the elephant".

I have chosen this elephant to illustrate our journey word this month because I think all of us who create have met our own elephants along the way.

My elephants this month were an earthquake and a hurricane, neither of which did any real damage here, though that first elephant made quite the bad impression on one who had never even considered worrying about such a thing, and stopped forward movement for over a week.

This piece is 8.5 x 11", machine appliqued and quilted.  The background design is my own drawing, and the elephant was machine embroidered prior to the quilting and is based on an elephant drawing in the public domain, from wikicommons.


when following dreams
the journey must continue
past the elephant

July - Balance

The first thing that came to my mind when I saw our word for July was "The Ape Who Guards the Balance" (Amelia Peabody, anyone?)  A bit of research told me that the book title refers to Thoth, the ancient Egyptian deity who weighed the hearts of the deceased to determine their fates.

Using an ancient Egyptian god in a Japanese poetic form wasn't going to fly, nor did I want to make anything death themed, but those scales stuck with me.  Then I thought of juggling the things I have to do and the things I want to do.  I googled juggler images and turned up an Egyptian tomb painting of female jugglers.  Still ignoring the obvious sign from god to make an Egyptian sort of quilt, I came up with this one.

The juggler is based on the tomb painting (which is in the public domain), but the face and eye were modernized.  I drew the scales while looking at various scale images, and scanned a real skeleton key to trace.  They key bit came from a book-on-tape I was listening to at the time, can't think what now.  The line was "the key is balance".

Techniques include fused applique, stitched down with monofilament, machine quilting, and hand embroidery (the chains holding the scales).  The haiku is written with a Liquid Gold pen.


trying to juggle
too many balls in the night
balance is the key

June - Waterways

The first thing that came to my mind when I saw June's word was watersheds - the small tributaries that flow into larger ones, and finally into the bays and oceans.

The image here was made several years ago with UltraFractal 4.  The fractal was printed onto fabric and then machine quilted.  It's surprisingly hard to quilt a fractal image, as many parts of it have no real boundaries, and it's easy to get lost or trapped, despite prior planning.

But what about the yellow bits?  Sunlight reflecting on the waters?  Sandbars?  Pollution?  You choose.

waterways of life

creeks and streams feeding rivers
flowing to the sea

Soft

Soft was very hard for me.  Apparently I don't often view my world through a soft filter.  I first thought of cat fur for soft, and then spring colors, which led to this.

Techniques used in this piece include fusing, machine applique and quilting, watercolor crayons and ink for the words, and the use of colored pencils to darken the petals and to lighten the water when I discovered that the thread work wasn't going to fix what turned out to be poor choices of fabrics.

a sudden wind gust
sends showers of soft petals
to drown in a pond

Triple Procrastination

When I first saw our April word, I couldn't think how I'd depict such a thing.  But the answer came as soon as I wrote it down in my day planner, along with all the jobs I keep writing in there, day after day, which never seem to get done. I'd make my undone jobs. Or some of them.

The background of this piece is made from leftover strata from my bargello period - fifteen or so years ago.  I always meant to do something with these things, they are too pretty to throw out. (procrastination #1)

I turned up the strata in the cleaning out and reorganization of my workroom - which I started back last fall and still have not finished. (procrastination #2)

The image depicts certain parts of my garden where I never got around to the fall clearances, which I can blame in part on the abnormally cold winter and spring we've had, but not entirely. (procrastination #3)

Techniques used here are machine piecing, fused and machine applique, machine quilting, stamping, ink on fabric, all done from commercial hand-dyes.  This quilt measures 10 1/2 by 11 3/4.

emerging spring leaves
reach for light through old dead weeds
last year's work undone

March - Sunshine

When we got our word for the month, sunshine and the coming spring became intertwined in my mind.  Here in Virginia, yellow crocuses and daffodils are the first to appear, but I've seen them blooming in the snow.   The bright yellow blooms of the forsythia are one of the true signs that winter is about done. This year they appear to have lied though, since we're expecting snow this weekend.

The branches and blossoms on this piece were taken from my own photos and from life, and drawn with various watercolor pencils and crayons and then quilted.

Since I found last month that I don't much like writing directly on the background, this time I placed my haiku on a scrap of rice paper. Then I quilted that and the background with monofilament thread.  The quilting design is meant to illustrate spring breezes.

yellow as sunshine
bright forsythia blossoms
proclaim winter's end