Oct 18 open
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.
Days late, and still missing one for today, here is a postcard for Friday, shown with the door open. I was experimenting with patchy backgrounds again, because I had fun with them the last couple times I used them. I wanted to see how dark I could make the background. It isn’t black, but it is a fistful of my darkest fabrics.
In the New Adventures department, Al wanted something on a T-shirt, so I made it for him, and it looked so good, I put a bunch of them up for sale. Choose your shirt, the saying comes for free.
And that is how I wasted this rainy afternoon.
Oct 17
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.
A patchy triangle background, a first attempt at triangle patterned quilting/noodling/repeats/fill patterns, and door with a warm and welcoming color inside.
I like the patchy backgrounds, and need to lay in some more of those. (I liked the patchy backgrounds when they were squares and rectangles too.) I had to color over it with a fabric crayon because it didn’t cover as neatly as the squares do, and some white interfacing was showing through. That helped pull the colors together as well, an unanticipated side effect. Triangle repeats are trickier than I thought. I need to spend some boring time with a pencil noodling around with them.
Sept Journal Quilt
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.
Missed the postcard yesterday, might make it up in the next couple days, did, instead, bake cake (see Gratitude, Deeply Felt) and finish September’s Journal page. I finished August’s too, but left it at the quilt shop for display. I’ll photograph it there and bring the pix back here, like some kind of quilt safari…
Anyhow – September. The month of my birth, therefore the month of the full on self portrait. I had been thinking Chuck Close, with his beautiful dots of color and intensity that suddenly resolve into a person, until I realized his pictures were feet across and his grid squares were inches. So I stared at what I had, and what I had was Photoshop and a lot of colors of fabric. So I printed out a picture of myself (that I didn’t hate) at 1/2" pixels, and set about recreating the intensity and color of the dots from my stash. I have the most lovely left overs – 3" and 4" and 5" bits of fabric with 1/2" holes whacked out of them. (For what to do with different sizes of punch check out Steven Nicholson, a student in the UK.)
I liked the resulting image except that it didn’t look like much up close, and most of the other months seem to be designed to be inspected at about book distance rather than wall distance. I wanted to add detail that was visible in close up and vanished with distance, and let the rastery-ness of the image shine through. I experimented with line work over the dots, but it looked ugly. Until I realized I could embroider in (nearly) invisible thread. Up close it would show the details, and far away it would blend into the image and let the real me (?) shine through. If you click through to Flickr, the image of the back is shown there. I traced some lines off the photograph onto silk organza, and ironed it onto the back to give myself guidelines for embroidering. I’m pretty pleased with the result.
Mum – to make this look like me, step back about 6 paces and maybe squint a little.
I don’t say much about Al.
He’s a fixture, a key part of life, always there when I need him…
He’s also my sysadmin. When the computer went blooie yesterday, he spent all night working on it, and restored it to health. In this family, we pay debts of gratitude with cake. Al does the taxes, I make a cake. Al clears the driveway after a particularly heavy snowfall, I bake a cake. Al gives others financial advice, they make him a cake.
This is gratitude cake:
A Lazy Daisy cake with lots (and lots and lots) of whipped cream.
Which must make this Cake Gratitude:
Thank you dear.
Oct 15 open
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.
I was thinking about doors on Advent Calendars. I wanted little doors that showed on the outside what to expect on the inside. I used the punches to get the shapes, and stitched it all down.
Oct 14
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.
This is from an article in Smithsonian Magazine about the archaeology of Alexandria. I was hoping for doors underwater, only because I dimly remember a science show about retrieving the treasures of Ancient Alexandria from the harbor, but this cistern was 3000 years BCE and built from things even more ancient than that… plus I liked the sunlight into it.
virus, computer not biological,
working on fixing
dollies fall clothes
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.
Sometimes I need to make art… ahem, Art.
Sometimes, I need to make the dollies some new clothes. Two pairs of pants, one set of overalls, three shirts and a vest. Still to come – three woolly coats for winter, another couple pairs of hand knitted socks (the dolls and I are the only ones who wear them) and maybe some shoes to keep off the chill. I had plans for sweaters too, but no rush. They don’t really need stuff for snow since they are pretty much indoor kids, but it can get nippy in Alice’s room at night.
I like clothes for dolls because they don’t outgrow them, but I realized that Alice is going to outgrow wanting them soon. I only have a year or two left, and then I become one of those women that makes doll clothes for her own dollies. Yikes.
Oct 13
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.
This is a part of one of my favorite doors in town, on the phone company building. There is this lovely doorway with a small, mean, ugly industrail door inside it. I printed this on dark gray fabric and it is too dark. I embroidered it anyhow, but it isn’t quite right.
Lee Thomson 
