Day 85 and the Red Robin babies

Today is day 85 and this is a Robin and her babies.

When I lived in SC my house was in the woods in a beautiful setting. The house was old and falling down pretty much. I tolerated a lot but I loved where it was so much that I didn't really notice the things that most people did. Over a window in the center of the house was a nest. I watched it being built. And it was amazingly wonderful. There was enough there that the egg's were in a safe nest. When they all hatched it was incredible to watch the mother bird go out and come back to feed the little babies. I loved it so much. They all yapped and she was always trying to teach them to fly. They got so big in the nest and there were five of them two more then the ones in the painting.! They were so big that they had to sit on the edge of the nest. Then finally one little bird sat on the edge flapping his wings and I thought it would be soon that they would leave the nest. They were all gone sometime in the next day or night. I loved watching their progress.

This portrait is available to you for $85 and it is about 9 x 11 and it is painting on a file folder. Thanks for stopping over and I'll see you tomorrow. :)

Day 74 and I'm tired.

Today is day 74 .. and here it is again after midnight .. i'm tired.

This portrait is painted on a piece of rusted and walnut dyed fabric. I am doing a class with Katrina Rodabaugh called Slow Fashion Style. This portrait is stitched onto a piece of rust dyed fabric as a way of combining my love of portraits and stitching. :) I have acquired all of my mom's fabric .. there is a lot. Right now we are doing a garage sale at my mom's house .. while my dad is starting to down size after moving to a new house. I want to keep everything .. I can't keep everything but I still want too .. this is a struggle .

This portrait is about 9 x 11 and .. will have more stitching then what is here .. if you would like to own this portrait just email me at iwilldream4ever@aol.com.

Have a good day .. again I struggle .. but it will get better soon.. See you tomorrow..

Letting go and hanging on.

I took this photo some years ago. One morning I woke up and  looked out of my kitchen window and saw this incredible light streaming through the trees and the plants they were just glistening. I quickly grabbed my camera and ran outside. I wanted to capture these moments. 

On father's day I phoned home to wish my father a Happy Father's Day. He sounded a bit frazzled. I know that my mother has not been well and her age is finally slowing her to the point where her days are filled with only the bare necessities of life. I ask how things are. And so the news is difficult always to hear. She is sleeping. My heart begins to feel this pang. I tell my dad I love him and we say our goodbyes. And like the light ... the tears stream through my consciousness. My mother is slipping away to another place and I feel time going quickly. It's funny how life seems to have a pace about it that changes aren't always so noticeable and then suddenly it seems to be going so quickly. Already nothing will be the same. My mother is suffering from Alzheimers and it is like saying goodbye before they go .. only you know it and they don't really. Its undescribeable confusion intermingled with glimpses of true happiness or peace at seeing someone you love. IT's a loss .. I feel grief before it feels I should feel it. It's death before death. Goodbye before the end. Strange words it seems ....Feels like standing on the edge of a big hole which is deep and dark and scarey.  It's all a lot to manage in my head and still try to make a living being a creative person. 

I guess the work is a welcome distraction from reality. I am barely hanging on. Trying to hope above hope that I will sell some work so I can keep doing what I love. Trying to resolve my own fears so I can get it out there. Grateful to have a mountain of ideas and time to execute them. In my ideal world I can trade art or clothes or jewelry that I make for everything that I need. Everyone everywhere loves all that I create. Not sure how to get from here to there. 

Now for some showing and telling .. after discovering http://www.spiritcloth.typepad.com/ I realized how much I loved stitching. I really find that I love to do the running stitch and am totally addicted to the texture that it creates on cloth. I love the boro cloths and even the whole idea of them and that they are mended japanese kimono's that the peasants wore. In repairing them and passing them on from one generation to the other, the cloths became infused with memory of past generations. The fact that they did this and gave such meaning to their cloths .. kimonos or blankets really resonates with me. They had a belief of not wasting any cloth and used everything they had. It seems like we have become such a disposable society any more and I like the idea of hand made even hand me down. Hand stitching is especially appealing. So partly to make something that is not like everyone else .. to have an air of my flavor, to feel my artsy self .. to fit me in a way that makes me comfortable. I started to make my own clothes. I feel good in my clothes. I put my self .. my sense of design into everything I make. I feel good when I can add hand stitching to my pieces and sometimes they are hard to part with. I often alter the fabric with dye or design either with extracting dye or adding .. with deconstructing a garment and putting it back together in a way that fits me better. No two pieces are alike. They may appear similar but they are all different. I hate to throw out even a scrap. You can imagine how my studio looks !!! ha .. I make jewelry with the scraps. I am convinced that I can make something beautiful out of anything .. lol .. it reminds me of playing dress up .. it feels like pretend .. what if i do this? I wonder what it will feel like to wear this? Thats a big part of why I do it. It's fun!! 

I was talking to a dear friend that has several of my pieces and she told me that she was comfortable in my clothes. I have to say that many times I make clothes that make me feel good .. this is such a wonderful feeling to give another woman a feeling of comfort .. and good sense of individuality. And I cannot escape the wonderful feeling of knowing that I did infuse my good will into each piece. I remember a while back a fellow stitcher Arlee Barr sent me a book that she had two of and in the pages of the book she stashed some of her fabric and piece of stitched fabric .. it was an anatomical heart. I was so so so excited to get it. And I was deeply moved to have it. There was something very profound to just have the knowledge that she had touched it and made all the stitches on it. I can't explain why it is but I was aware of how I felt about that. And then there is my wedding dress. I designed it and my mother sewed it and hand sewed 2000 seed pearls onto it. I am not married any more. Friends have suggested I part with the dress. I just can't. I can't let go of my mothers stitching and love that I know was infused into that dress. I DID take it out of the box that it was in for over 30 years. It's now hanging in my closet. I WIll do something with it. Not sure what yet but I will. well this is turning into a rather long post .. so I'll just share one of the pieces I did with stitching and old doilies and a shirt. I even made a rose with leaves from some eco dyed silk. Thanks for stopping over. I feel better now that I put it ALL out there haha .. 

Monday Mounds of Making

On top the long field of blue images is of my stitching results while taking a whispering hearts online class. I am learning many things and enjoying the interactions with all the people that follow the sewing blog and participate in the class. Lots of inspiration there.

It seems that I am always doing something and it never seems to be just one thing continually just many of several things. haha. I just can't seem to focus on doing one subject matter or media.

So what I am showing here under the sewing are some photos of a church birdhouse. Every year a local non-profit group called Homes for Hope does a fund raiser to help house people. They ask local artists to decorate/paint the birdhouses. This year I took two birdhouses, one church and one house. I thought I'd post the results of my efforts. I added the trees because I am still loving the drawing of trees. I also painted some jewels on the steeple just because I could. I'd been looking at some books on jewelry antiquities. I thought they were beautiful so I just added them to my church. Inside I wrote out a poem that I found in an old piece of sheet music and because I just thought it was beautiful. And I painted it all with gesso inside and then covered it all over with walnut ink and then in clear mat medium. Also the imagery inside on the ceiling of the church came from another piece of sheet music. Sometimes the illustrations and borders on them are quite elaborate. I'll post the other bird house tomorrow. Oh and with this church birdhouse I also donated a framed tree painting of mine.