RETHINK EVERYTHING

This was the graffiti message that I saw on my recent drive from Refuge Cove to Oregon. Long hours of endless miles, passing streams of traffic, shopping malls galore, listening to NPR and my favorite music: the message of RETHINK EVERYTHING really jumped out at me.  My next quilt journal with the theme of “TEXT” had some content here.

What do I think needs rethinking? Our polarizing politics, overbearing religion, our endless consumption of stuff, stifling immigration policies, how we prioritize the environment, education, our out of control health care, are just a few items (not to mention the American tendency to get involved in way too many foreign situations). Even though I live in countries other than my own (United States), I still pay close attention and am very concerned about the activities of the US. Yes, Mexico and Canada certainly have their share of problems too, but the US just seems so CRAZY these days.  The problems we face are endless and I believe we need some major mind shifting, rather than the same-old, same-old ways of doing things, before we can make any sense out of our mess.

The bottom line for me is that this all seems so out of control, and I am once again reminded that my little world is all I have any impact on. My quilt journal for this month reminds ME of that message FOR MYSELF. Thus, my new favorite mantra is RETHINK EVERYTHING (rivaling my new favorite bumper sticker: DON’T BELIEVE EVERYHTING YOU THINK). On this personal level, it’s a call to challenge the beliefs that no longer serve me.

For construction, I chose to continue with a diamond pattern that I was using for a quilt, yet on a smaller scale. This diamond piece was certainly a thinking challenge for me, and I was hoping that making a small piece would help me with the larger quilt. When everything that is normally straightforward (90 degrees, etc.), is now cocked to a 60 degree angle, it can really mess up your mind (at least it did mine), so here was another situation where I had to rethink everything. I was hoping to have a full rectangle to work with, but my planning was poor and I ended up short. I added an oval frame which solved my problem. I then stitched in my words. I thought I had planned it well, but quickly ran out of room at the end and had to squeeze in my last letters. I bleached out my letters and the border and added tiny buttons for accent. I was hoping to find some in brown, beige or gray, but the store was out so, rethinking it, I settled for blue.

SCREENING

Now in Oregon, I have pick of activities to choose from: classes, groups, sessions and workshops, all fabric related of course. I'm like a kid in a candy store. Today's item on the agenda: screening with Christine. Once my neighbor in Alaska who I taught to dye, she now is my southern Oregon neighbor who has pursued this craft to the "nth" degree. She always has something new to show me.

This year it's screening. You know, like silk screening, but with a twist.

She set up the screens a few days ago with a thick layer of print paste and then imbedded all sorts of textured objects into the paste and let it dry. We pulled off the objects and were left with our screen for printing. The hardened paste was a dark color and I chose a ruddy brown as my printing color.

On the screen, the wet began to break down the dry and the pattern emerged onto my fabric as I sqee-jeed across the screen. I filled up my meter of soda-ashed cotton and set it aside to cure.

But there was more to show me. She pulled out her collection of textured goodies and high-density foam roller and set to demonstrating how to put these beautiful textures onto fabric. Not only could we place the texture under the fabric while rolling on top, but also roll over the texture with the high density foam and capture the pattern for a quick transfer. I loved every minute of this process and my mind started reeling with possibilities. I went on to try a few stencil transfers and of coursed watched Christine with her creations too.

At the end of our session we set up the screens with more print paste and a new texture design. They will take a day or two to harden and be ready for more printing.

Now curing, the fabrics will be ready for adding a background color in a day or two. For now, I am searching out online silkscreen frames to haul to Mexico to continue the fun down there. Muchas gracias, Christine.

ANOTHER JOURNAL PIECE: A FAVORITE THING

If by chance I find myself in the Seattle area, the region of my birth and upbringing, I am always hoping for a clear day in which to view Mt. Rainier. I am consistently awestruck at the sight of this majestic mountain. It truly takes my breath away. I am taken back to an infantile state, subconsciously a small child, feeling the emotional power of this iconic giant.

I not only grew up with Mt. Rainier at my doorstep, but also spent my summers during my college years there, working at Paradise Inn. My father worked there when he was that age too. First a maid, then a waitress, I worked hard during my shifts and took to the hills on my off hours. Four times I climbed to the top, and on that last ascent I was part of a research crew who spent an entire week living at the 14,000+ foot summit. On our last day there, we were overtaken by an electrical storm which really made things interesting. We tried to descend the mountain but our fillings (in our teeth) and pack frames were buzzing, and the lightning was feeling way too close for comfort. Back up we climbed to wait it out for another few hours inside a snow cave.
My last adventurous experience with Rainier was in 1980. I had been hired for the upcoming summer, so I was heading to the mountain for a training session on an early May morning. The closer I got to the park entrance, the darker the sky became, and then a dusting of something snow-like started to fall from the sky.  Darker and darker, with dust now billowing up around  the few cars as they motored along, I knew something was happening, but had no idea what it was. I arrived at Longmire, half way into the park and was pulled over by the ranger. Mt. St. Helens had just erupted, and all cars were detained there until the situation could be assessed. For four or five hours, we watched the sky turn pitch black, the air turn thick with ash and collect on the roads in a 6” blanket.  Slowly the light returned and we were allowed to leave, but only back to where we came from. My job was put on hold that summer, and I never returned to work there again. The next year I left the area, and since then my experiences with Mt. Rainier have either been from an airplane or from the highway, a long distance away.

Sometimes when I am mulling over ideas for a journal quilt, I gather possibilities for not only what I want to do, but also for what is possible. For example, with “favorite things”, I was leaning toward books or maps. That is, until I was looking through a tub of odds and ends and came across a scarf/handkerchief of Mt. Rainier. I can’t remember where it came from, maybe a second hand shop or a leftover at a laundromat, but there it was, reminding me of its importance in my life (and a bit map-like too!). So I simply sliced it up, added a border and called it good.  

SUMMER JOURNALING

Summer of 2011...it's been a good one. Lots of company, fishing, gardening, hiking, rain (early on), and sun (in September). The harvest was good to us. Refuge Cove once again comes through!
My creative juices were at a standstill this summer. At first I was worried, but now see my hiatus as a needed break.
Last week I conquered three journal quilts, long overdue!

#1 Prairie - Since I have never been to the prairies, I was a bit stumped at how to interpret this theme. But I have lived in a number of places that I have described to others as "Little House on the Prairie" type settings, and a wood cookstove has been a part of a few of them. ('Tis the simple life for me.) This was another bleach study, this time piecing together oddball pieces, dyeing this patchwork black, then stitching in the woodstove and bleaching out parts of it with Softscrub.

#2 Hallelujah - This is my interpretation of a U-Tube of K.D. Lang singing "Hallelujah". Beautiful song, amazing stage, but my internet connection was uncooperative that night and all I could watch was about 10 seconds at a time. I watched frozen scenes of lights on the stage, and decided I would try to capture that. I pieced together blues with white elements in them, then stitched in concentric circles with lines and bleached out sections. I was pleased with how this turned out as it truly was only an idea in my head.

#3 A Thin Green Line - This came out of no where, or maybe it was from my box of scraps that I was rummaging through one night. First I found the hand and the rest just followed. Yes there's some bleaching here: the hand, the forks, the lettering. I really love playing with bleach over patches of color. I was hoping that the vertical yellow would bleach out white, but it decided to blend in with the rest of the utensil.

MINI RETREAT

Two days away from home, hosted in a lovely setting on Quadra Island, with the focus being FABRIC...what more could I ask for? I left my family behind and my day-to-day chores to join my two friends, Terry (our hostess) and Ellen, for what we called our mini-retreat. I packed my tub with dyes, white fabric, stamps, and a collection of embellishment tools with the idea of creating fabric pieces in both new and tried-and-true methods.

Terry's new home, not yet completed to the stage of being move-in ready, was perfect for the 3 of us. Downstairs was our makeshift studio and upstairs were our living quarters. Her husband helped to rig up a hot and cold water sink, complete with a 5-gallon bucket underneath as our drainage system.

We busily tried a number of methods: wheat paste cracking, stamping and making stamps, carving stamps out of styrofoam trays, palette dyeing and folding. Using wheat paste was a new one for me. The sun cooperated by drying out the pasted fabric quickly, then I gently crushed it to get the "cracked" look. I painted over it with thickened dye to fill in the cracks. My results showed that I should have been more aggressive with my crushing, so I went ahead and tried it again. Terry drew a lovely picture into her wheat paste AND pressed lace into it which produced amazing results. This is one method I will definitely try again.

We stopped in time to spruce ourselves up a bit for a lovely dinner at the Heriot Bay Inn. What a treat to go out to dinner with friends.
Sunday was another day of more of the same. By day's end I was exhausted, but filled with a much needed burst of creative energy. We vowed to make it an annual event.

                        

SUMMER MONTHS THAT BEGIN WITH THE LETTER J

June and July.

I'm living the good life at Refuge Cove, tending my garden, fishing and prawning on a regular basis, enjoying time with friends and family. Squeezed within all of this I have been working to create my summer stash of goods to sell. For the first time in 10 years, I am opting out of participation in the Cortes Craft Shop, and only working for the "Feathered Fish", the local gallery owned and operated by fellow Co-op member, Sandie Dixon. This is her second year and I was quite pleased with results last year, so have decided to keep my focus here in Refuge Cove. And, I haven't made that much this past winter, so the little I can get accomplished in these two summer months that begin with the letter J will be it for the year. Next week, my sewing room gets taken over by one grandson as his makeshift bedroom, so that will be it...4 more days.

One of my goals this summer has been to use up my stash: fabric pieces large and small, thread, small pieces of batting that I sew together to make larger pieces. I even went through my collection of small quilted pieces, either finished wall hangings or a practice piece that I've carried around in the stash box for way too long. I looked at them, took myself back to when I created it, then sliced and diced to make something new. It was liberating to let go of these pieces.

I've focused on two items, luggage tags and tote bags. They have been the perfect recipients of my scraps and remnants, or the small piece that has been folded in the bottom of a tote for many years.

This is a pattern for me: clearing out what I'm not using. I do it in my closet, in those junk drawers that collect all sorts of oddities, my kitchen cabinets. I like things simple and minimal. Minimalist Mary is what someone called me, and the title fits well.

So 127 luggage tags and 7 totes later, I am soon to put the commercialism aside and focus on more play and creative expression in my craft. And I'm looking forward to that!

FAIRY HOUSES

You might be wondering, "What is that?" Look hard, what do you see?
I live in the coastal rainforest of British Columbia. The name of the community is Refuge Cove on West Redonda Island, in the middle of Desolation Sound. This community is a land and housing cooperative shared by 18 shareholders, our family being one of them.
You enter " Refuge" from the series of docks, where, depending on the month of the year, you can see a wide range of qualities and quantities of boats moored there. In the summer months, it is a mecca for boaters in search of fuel, groceries, a meal out, perusing through the book exchange, or just some socializing-on-the-dock time. You might even catch a game of washers. In the wintertime, you may see a few float houses and a skiff or two.
Past the "commercial zone" are the "keep out" gates, the boundary of the members-only zone. This is how you would come to my house. I pass boardwalk, hillside and the last 100 feet of thick forest, which pops right onto the bluff where our house sits. This little forest trail has become the home for a few of my ceramic, metal or glass collectibles. I was ready to part with them (probably more like a de-cluttering mood) and decided to give them a new home along this trail. This all started about six years ago so some of the items have a nice coat of moss on them by this time and are getting hard to see.
Today five fairy houses appeared on this magical little mossy path. They are made of sticks, moss, rocks, pinecones and built into the natural curvature of the rock cliff that winds its way next to our path. They are hard to spot, but they are definitely fairy houses. (I don't think the fairies are living there yet, but are probably on their way.)

Who built those fairy houses? My niece, Sarah, and her boyfriend, Chris, were visiting for a week, and just this morning, I walked them to the boat to say good-by. On our way down the hill at 5:30 am, they mentioned for me to look for the fairy houses. It took a moment, but my eye finally tuned in. They had created them the previous afternoon, adding more magic to the path.
So the little quilt journal piece above is a fairy house. It's the one built under a cleft of rock that has the perfect triangle shape, so naturally created by the moss. Sarah and Chris added the finishing touches: sticks rocks, more moss, pinecones.
I've been trying to come up with an idea for this quilt journal challenge with the theme of "TODAY". Lately I've been in the sort of creative funk that does not allow me to have fast reaction times (from idea to reality in just one day???? You must be kidding!). Once I had taken photos of all five fairy houses and got to looking at them, putting it onto fabric seemed like a doable project, with the main idea to create a basic structure, similar to one the actual homes, covered with lots and lots of green stitching to represent the moss. It was therapeutic and the perfect activity to get some of the spider webs and kinks out of my free motion system. I finished, not on the "today", but on the "tomorrow" which isn't too bad for me.
So on this "TODAY" (which actually was the "today" of about 5 days ago), the fairy houses appeared, and Sarah and Chris left Refuge Cove for their return to Annapolis, Maryland, after a fantastic week-long visit. Two, bright and capable recent college graduates, they truly appreciated the uniqueness of our environment and took advantage of all the highlights of Refuge Cove: kayaking, canoeing and swimming in the lake, fishing, prawning, hiking, eating amazing home-harvested meals, playing washers, and enjoying family time together in a special surrounding.
Each time I walk down our path, I look hard to find the "fairy houses" that are tucked so secretively along the path and in the cliffside. Warm memories of a good visit come back to me.
Here's one of the real fairy houses: