Home is where your grandparents live
Several years ago my grandmother gave me the embroidery book on the right. Purchased years ago, it is a 35-cent copy of 100 embroidery stitches. As it turns out, they’re still making the book and I bought a new one a couple of years ago. They’re exactly the same inside, it’s just a new cover.
I was doing some embroidery the other day and chanced upon these while looking for a stitch. It made me think of my grandparents, who live in the Midwest. My parents are both from the midwest, and my aunts and an uncle still live there (hi Aunt B!).
Although I mostly grew up in Texas my summers and winters at my grandparents’ farm left a lasting, deep impression on me. When people ask me where I’m from, I think of the midwest as much as I think of Texas. It’s part of who I am.
The family farm and surrounding area is a vastly different place than was our home in the suburbs. The town my grandparents live in (that’s a view of the center of town down the “main street” in the picture to the left) is really tiny and quiet, whereas suburbia is large and noisy. At the farm there was room to roam - to shady creeks, sunny ponds, through fields of the blackest dirt, down quiet gravel roads. In the suburbs there’s concrete and houses and the neighborhood pool. Suburbia is mostly newish while the farmhouse was oldish and creaked. The farm had much more of a sense of place, a sense of roots and ties and tradition, all things I value.
My grandmother always had a big garden, and crisp, sweet corn was usually in season when I was there. Tall flowers, too. I weeded corn fields, sweating in long sleeves to avoid the sharp leaves. I fed cattle, and some noisy pigs. I had a fuzzy kitten named Diana one year. I always body surfed two-story bales of hay. I had a best friend named Katie. I went to the Maid Rite visiting grandma Smith, and looked through her humongous collection of Stuff packed into small areas. I froze my arse off in my uncle’s coveralls one winter playing with cousins. I wondered just how many relatives my parents had. I swam upstream against the strong Mississippi current and swallowed mud. I wondered what the one-room schools my dad went to were like. My patient aunt tried to teach me to drive a standard transmission on hilly gravel roads. There were holidays and snow, summers and creeks, but mostly there were people I loved.
It’s hard to say, when you think of who you are, to figure out where it all came from in making up the mishmash of you. This is one part of me that’s clear.
Embroidery Day!
Today I’m dragging out some old, old stuff. Many years ago I got interested in embroidery and went after it with my usual obsessiveness. I think I like it because it’s really the first crafty type of thing I ever did. I started this one embroidered bib when I was maybe 6 and finally finished it when I was about 22. I’ll find it sometime and show it to you.
I did these 3 embroidery pieces when I was 22 or 23 years old. Ever since then it’s just been stored, doing nothing. You will see I have a certain style - I like organic-ey, rounded shapes, kind of like vines. I love those shapes, it’s so very much fun to draw and sew!
This next blue/green piece is my favorite of all the pieces of embroidery I’ve done. Looping vines and 2 kinds of flowers. I don’t quite know what I’m going to do with it, but who knew I had enough patience to do the satin stitch on those petals!
This last is a foretaste of my last show-and-tell project today … I love the scrolled look of the embroidery. More curved shapes!
Finally, I had three pieces of Holiday embroidery in the pile that I’d apparently originally intended to be pillows. I decided they would be one of my projects to finally get done when I reorganized. I can’t remember the details of what I was going to do originally, so I got to make it up again.
So … here’s my Xmas pillows, in April! Don’t laugh!! It’s a 10-year old project finally done!! I think they turned out nicely, kind of like presents, even if I do have to put them away immediately.
Seriously, regardless of the theme & decoration here, I still faced some sewing fears! In this case, the red fabric is a really shiny satiny material, very slippery - festive! I usually avoid this kind of thin, slippery fabric, and this was a good opportunity to grit my teeth and sew with it anyway. I also avoid buttonholes like the plague, and I had to make buttonholes for the envelope closure, and because of the fabric I had to use stabilizer in it. But I prevailed.
Sewing Tools
When I was working on my bag the other night, I was kind of fascinated by all the tools I was using. Sewing, I have to say, is one of the most intensive tool-based crafts I do. And I have a lot of tools and gadgets, but there are so many more out there that you can buy that the array is just stunning. Sewing implements seems to be kind of a personal thing. People have definite preferences about what sorts of pins, irons, machines, needles, etc work for them best. Things they can’t live without.
Due to school, I took a five-year hiatus from crafting because my work/school schedule was so crap-tastic I didn’t have a choice. I missed it a lot. It’s actually been fun over the past months to get involved in machine sewing in particular again. I get to see what tools I used to prefer before I packed ‘em all away, and look at how my skills have changed and what I prefer these days.
I’ve realized I was either missing things because I avoided some part of sewing (hello, zippers?) or that my tools needed some care, updating and replacement. So I’ve been in the process of buying various new things. My next couple of buys will be new fabric scissors, but good scissors are not cheap! Plus my sewing machine is squeaking (horrid noise!) and it needs a tuneup as well. So here’s the tools I can’t live without, and for those of you without a machine sewing addiction, I’ll even tell you what the hell these things are. I’ve spend literally hours on websites and in craft stores figuring out what all the gadgets do. I don’t have nearly enough of them.
Top - Measuring things: Omnigrid ruler, curve ruler, my trusty retractable measuring tape from the Container store and my cutting mat that I found on sale for 75% off. Nice!
Right - Cutting implements: Rotary cutter with 2 settings for fabric thickness (needs new blade, maybe I should get a new daisy cutter?), one pair of nice scissors (not so nice now), a pair of stork embroidery scissors (very sharp, from Jeff’s grandmother) and one with one flat, blunt side from his grandma that I’m not exactly sure what it’s for except probably embroidery - if you have an idea, let me know! I also have a larger pair of shears and pinking shears, and some folding scissors (one pair of which I actually got on the plane with!).
Left Top - Marking, Pinning: 3 different pin holders, one for regular pins, the one with an M is what I made while trying out the Berninas at the Maker Faire and it holds big quilting pins, and the other wrist one is one I got because my mom always used one like this. It holds actual needles for sewing & embroidery. Plus I have chalk thing that has interchangeable colored chalk, the inevitable seam ripper for those times when you just have to piss yourself off, and a sewing gauge with slidable guide. That last one - I had to look up its real name just now, and I once believed a ruler was just as good, but - NO.
Left Bottom - Pins and Needles: I have buckets of pins and needles. Seems like every new project needs some sort of different flippin’ needle. I have actually read where people think you ought to change the needle with each new project - no way, Jose. I have to change the durn thing often enough anyway. I do like my different upholstery and special purpose needles, and I have plastic ones for yarn, too. I think I like quilting pins and embroidery needles the best - they’re Huge!
What I don’t have, and am apparently wanting to spend all my money on: good scissors of various sorts, and maybe a circle cutter, bias tape maker and loop turner, different sizes of the omnigrid ruler (mostly a bigger one), fabric grips, a yardstick, and some sort of thing that’s reasonable for basting quilts. Oh, and I need about a metric ton more bobbins. I’m sure there’s more stuff I want, gadgets are the awesomest.
When not in use, the majority gets dumped into a basket for easy access. It also usually holds scraps of thread and some empty bobbins down at the bottom. And rats, didn’t actually mention the 1st and 2nd most important tools of machine sewing - a machine and an iron!
