April 14
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I made a little proof of concept piece to see if the strings would work, and the silk rings would fit around the little white shells, and how the beads work with the punched out holes and the other bits… I like the way it is working, but honestly the construction to make the frame for it was pretty intense.

The plan is fifty shells, ten each on 5 strings, and suspended in a frame of some kind. I am thinking the frame might have to be wood instead of interfacing, because I don’t think the interfacing will hold up the weight of many many more shells. I still have to finish all the silk rings. Only about 20 left to go, out of a hundred total. Yikes! I realize too that part of the trouble with these ideas of collections is that they take longer to put together than the smaller pieces. This one isn’t much of a collection, but it does help me think about the larger piece in a much better way.

April 13
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I fell hard for these little shells mostly because of the variations in the size of the pink line and the zebra stripes. I should take some better close-ups in daylight, and post them tomorrow. Time permitting.

I have no fabric for today, it was filled, pretty happily, with other things. Instead I have a story.

I went to ride the Canadian horses I ride for Bob and Leonor, two towns over. They are up in the hills to the east of Amherst, with woods all around, and streams, high from the melt, coursing and trickling through the woods. It was a gorgeous day, and I convinced Bob to come with me. He took Penny, who is large and will be five this summer, and I rode Ruby who is much smaller, and will be four this summer. We started off up the road, and into the woods. We were trotting along, hopping over downed logs, when Ruby stopped abruptly. He eyes bugged out, and her nose was twitching, and her ears were semaphoring around and she was quivering all over. Penny kind of rammed into us from behind, and then she caught wind of what-ever-it-was too, and the pair of them stood rooted to the spot. Bob and I looked and finally saw what had their attention.

Two moose. One very large, about the size of Penny (whose back is up to my eyebrows) and dark and glossy and pretty clearly pregnant. The other was not much shorter, but looked unprepossessing. If it had been human, its shoes would have been untied, and shirt tails sticking out and sporting a severe case of bed-head. Bob and the horses and I watched them move out ahead of us, then cut across the trail and head up the hill, at a low headed, shambling trot. The horses remained rooted to the spot. They wouldn't move without strong encouragement for the next .25 mile, and after that Ruby kept scanning the underbrush for any further moose that might leap out at her, all the way home.

That was a pretty gratifying way to start the morning.

April 8
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Finally!!

I am indebted to the free graph paper guy for three different kinds, plus variable sizes, of diamond shapes in printable graph paper.

This took so long to get organized I used up both the larger and smaller sets of diamonds.

I didn't post anything yesterday because I couldn't stand myself. I am much cheerfuller about everything today.

black and red diamonds
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

two more tries – mosaic(k)ed with those from yesterday so as to get the full impact!

The first (far left) is the closest, but the diamonds are catty-wampus, and I need them sitting straight in proper rows and columns for what I have in mind. The 2nd left is an attempt to piece diamonds, with mixed results. Still crooked, and the corners don’t meet (which is just a precision issue) and they are too tall and thin (which is a measuring issue).

I gather this week is dedicated to making the diamonds I want come out JUST RIGHT (yes, I am shouting!)

onward!

April 5 A
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

April 5 B
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Both of these are making me really grumpy, plus the first attempt that I just started over because I hated it so much.

I know that I like my fabric to Stay Put when I am stitching on it. I don't mind ripped edges or wavery bits or things requiring ironing, but they have to lie down and not move while I stitch them down. I though I should push this particular envelope a bit, and I tried to hand sew this diamond grid together and that one made me very uncomfortable so I stopped. Then I tried to pin it together for some free machine sewing (5B) and that got monstrously puckery and made me cry and then I tried just straight stitching it together with feed dogs and forward stitching (5A) but it was falling apart so I stopped.

Tomorrow I will make the background that I wanted to make before I got the bright idea to push the envelope, and maybe later this week I will talk about haircuts.

April 3
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I guess they are not exactly disorganized, more jumbled up. It is a very fine distinction, I know!

I realized that a bunch of my ideas required holes, so I spent a happy several hours drilling holes in shells (the pink ones are fast, the yellow ones are slower) and little fimo pieces (hand drill, very fast).

There will be an actual project type object tomorrow.

April 1
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I want to feel rich. In money, I'm not, very. I mean, I can't afford a horse of my own, which is my current standard for extra money in my life. In other things I am.

In digging through my collection of beads found these diamonds I'd made from polymer clay (Fimo, Sculpey, odd mixtures) while thinking about the Queen of Diamonds. So I pulled them out and hooked them together using green wire. I am rich in red diamonds.

I am rich in other things too. You'll see them over the month. Mostly in sets of things. I'm thinking about making something over and over, getting good at it. Or to see the variations that come from building things with my hands.

And I know it is April first, but for fooling, I got nothing. Sorry. I love the theory, but I never get the actual implementation done very well. My favorite set of Fools has to be the crazy food from Family Fun Magazine. They have "spagetti and meatballs" that is frosting and red food color and lumps of cupcake, with coconut for grated cheese. There were other fun ones, like tiny foods, and backwards foods (so supper looked like dessert and dessert looked like supper), but none of it happened today.

Happy April one, regardless.

March 31
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

5 felt circles from a gift bag, 4 felt circles from a piece of felted wool jersey (it is purpler than it looks – I'm having color troubles) some black embellished circles and 4 acid green mother of pearl dangles.

ETA (Edited to add) the circles are about 2", so the whole object is roughly six inches on a side. The connections are satin stitch on the sewing machine with my (new! gorgeous!) purple variegated thread.

It looks nine-patchy, right?

March 30
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

A collection of experiments, all stitched together –

The black felt was an old piece of wet felting from a workshop that was old enough to be used for something else, so I experimented with acid dye (instead of just using food coloring and vinegar) to get a nice deep black. It was no harder than using the food coloring!

The white felt was to see how hard it was to make a thin, fine piece of wet felted material. I have made several pieces of dry felted material with the machine, and they are nice but profoundly perforated. Plus I wanted to incorporate rayon threads for !shiny! and the embellisher was not working well for that part, so I slapped this piece together. It went quicker than I remember, I think because I was working small and thin. The shiny came out more discreet than I was hoping for, but clearly present. While it was drying, I noticed I still had my washers from a series of rust dyeing projects, so I laid a row of them along the edge and got a series of lovely rusty donut shapes.

The end result was free machine stitched together in between two layers of soluble stabilizer. The stabilizer is stitched into the project and then rinses out. Theoretically. It takes a lot of rinsing, and until it is gone it acts more like starch and stiffens the project substantially.

One more March felting piece, and then April! I think I need to return to my 4″ squares for April, I’m losing focus…