Memories Made and Found

This theme was so big I didn't know where to start with it.  So I pro-craft-inated for quite a bit.  Over the Christmas my sewing machine had to make its way from the dining table to the boxroom, so we could all fit around the table on Christmas day.  Somehow that physical move disconnected me from sewing altogether and I turned towards paper crafts that only need a small bit of the table to work off of.  

I found a series of You Tube videos by Amity Bloom using vintage papers to make journals and I was really drawn to them.  Watching all those videos on You Tube and pondering the theme of memories got me to thinking.  I started collecting things as a memory keeping idea, birthday cards, favourite bits of fabric and Mum gave me my grandmother's wedding rings to keep.  

I'm not a jewellery wearer (except maybe for a watch) and all the pieces mum gives me end up in a fancy box or somewhere safe where I can't find them again.   So, I decided to make somewhere nice to keep them.  I used some birthday money I had gotten from my mum for art materials and purchased Amity Bloom's course on the Artists in Bloom journal, thinking I would make a memory book and include bits of quilting and fabric and paper and anything I could think of to use including my grandmother's rings.  

 

I didn't quite make it exactly the same as Amity Bloom's or use vintage looking materials but I did follow her process and use my fabric scraps, pages from magazines mum had bought me, watercolour card stock, quilted fabric and some wallpaper we had leftover from doing up mum's house.  

 

The quilted panel was from a workshop I did with Mary Palmer (award winning quilter and Best in Show at Festival of Quilts so very privileged to have had a workshop with her!).  This has been covering my sewing machine for years and some of the quilting is grand and some of it's pants!  So, I chopped it up to use it to bind the book.

The music paper is wrapping paper from a Christmas present and the little flip our window picture comes from the Simple Things Magazine.  I wish this was the view from my window while I am working from home.  I get to see the roofs of other peoples houses but we do have starlings nesting under the eaves and they sing to me all the day long.  Along with a neighbours barking dog.  Sometimes our dogs answer back but I think he annoys them so they mostly ignore him.

This is a gift bag I was given, so I used one side of it and made a pocket to keep little notes in.  Cotton and Steel fabric on other side with coyotes howling at the moon.

More dogs! Cards I got for my brithday back in November and a stitched card from Christmas made into flip outs and more pockets to put keepsakes into!  Friends and loved ones make it into the book too this way.

Wallpaper, fabric scraps and some texture paste used with a butterfly stencil and some watercolours.  I love this cover as it reminds me of my Dad.  He was an amazing at whistling and could whistle songs and have the birds whistle back at him.  There are so many things my Mum has given me in this book, its nice to have a reminder of Dad too.

I know there is a whole debate on useful objects being art but when you are making with the intention of art and it happens to be useful too I think that's a double bonus!   

So that's it.  My take on Memories for this month's challenge. A bit of everything, some recent memories, some distant, some not even my own but all connected to me and now bound up in a quilted fabric papery something!

Memories: Stitches in Time

Any needlework activity is a source of sweet memories for me.  My sewing room is a time capsule of the last century, stuffed full of things from family and friends -- pin-tucked petticoats from the early 1900s, fashion photographs from the 1920s, tatted trims and flour sacks from the 1930s, embroidered pillow cases from the 1960s -- probably a very common situation among needleworkers, but one that makes me so happy!

Inspired by the book Crazy Patchwork by Janet Haigh, (1998), I decided to combine decades' worth of textile treasures into a soft memory album.

 

"Stitches in Time" includes applique, yo-yos, crocheted trim, embroidery, buttons, and more.  I included the initials of my grandmother, mother, myself, and my sister.

 

The little piece of vintage fabric in the bottom right, was part of a whole swatch collection sent to me by Paula B., who was one of our members for a short time.

You can read more about how I made this piece here at my personal blog, Deep in the Heart of Textiles. If you click on the image there, you will also be able to see a larger version so you can see the details -- I don't know how to arrange that in Blogger!

I think I end all of my posts the same way -- "I didn't make a dent in my supplies; I loved making this piece, and I would like to do a series!" And that is true this time as well.  :)