Winter begins

Different spots and time of day, same perspective. That top one? I think it’s begging to be made into an embroidery pattern.

Tilden Park, Berkeley Hills. Wordless Wednesday.

I get ideas while I sleep …

On Saturday morning I woke up with an idea to do a papercut. The subject I wanted to do is not actually this, but when I try something new I usually do flowers the first time, it’s a recurring theme. This was one of those usual times, so I did this.

It was fun. Papercutting. It was nice to think of something and do it in one day. Most of the things I think of take a lot more time. It looks nice with light behind it … so I’m trying to think of a way to mount this so I can have space in between the two layers and allow some light to filter through as well. I sense a trip to a framing store coming on.

While I was doing this one, I was talking to my brother. He saw the final and liked it, so I said I’d make him one. I figured I could handle something a little more complex on time 2. His request was expected – he also has a usual theme that he requests on a regular basis, and it’s not flowers. I’ll give you a hint, his email signature is “I fear flat planets.”

Can anyone guess what mountain this is? If you follow the picture to Flickr, you will see, but if anyone can guess that would make me happy that I got it sort of right. The inspiration for my original pencil sketch was a great photo by birder7 I found on Flickr. This one also does well being backlit. An Jeremy, once I figure out the frame, I’ll send this to you.

Papercutting is fun, if a little hard on the fingers holding the X-acto knife. Next time, I’ll investigate using a thimble on my forefinger. All those tiny trees! The backgrounds are watercolors. I’m not sure if I’d like these as much if they weren’t transparent colors.

Since this wasn’t exactly the theme I had in mind – I have a scene in my head I’m not sure how to execute – I think I will try a couple more (once my finger recovers) and see if I can really manage to put on paper (or cut out of paper) what I was thinking of. Ooh! Just thought of another one too …

Flowers for my Mom

This past weekend Jeff and I made a trip to Houston to visit our respective mothers. Since I work on Mother’s Day, we were a week late, but the love is still there, right?

So for this past Mother’s Day I decided to make my mother a gift of one of her favorite things, violets. I wouldn’t have thought of it except one of my favorite crochet designers – June Gilbank – provided a lovely pattern for a cute little pot of violets just in time to make them for the day.  It didn’t take too long to make it, it was fun, and it turned out so, so well!  June is one of my favorite designers because her patterns are deceptively simple, but just exactly right.

As you maybe can see from the picture, my mother loves violets, and as long as I can remember has grown lovely examples on her kitchen windowsill. So the idea was to make her a special, permanently flowering version of them.  I took June’s pattern and altered it just a wee bit, and it became not just a pot of violets, but a basket for jewelry.

I made sure to use fuzzy green yarn (Jiffy yarn in Avocado) for the leaves, because I always loved the soft velvet of violet leaves. Apart from that, the main difference from the pattern was that I split it in half to make a basket.  The original design is all one piece and stuffed with fiberfill.  In order to change it, I judiciously applied plastic cross stitch canvas, some matching stash fabric and a bit of fiberfill.

The first step was to cut out circles of plastic canvas to stiffen the flower top “lid” and the bottom of the pot.  Then I sewed a rectangle of the canvas into a circle shape to stiffen the pot sides.  I also sewed the circle for the pot bottom to the sides. I used plastic canvas because (1) I could sew it and (2) plastic doesn’t disintegrate over time like cardboard does and (3) it’s waterproof.

Next I got a large circle of coordinating fabric from my stash and stuffed it into the little basket made from plastic canvas.  I stitched the fabric to the canvas with yarn around the top, and then I tacked the fabric to the bottom of the pot with four tiny stitches, also using yarn.  That leaves you with a basket lined with fabric.  Then I trimmed some of the major excess off the outside, still leaving a considerable amount so it’s fabric-lined inside and out.  Here’s the lining basket after sewing (and a lovely picture of the Men’s Health magazine I was using as a table).

The final step was to stuff the fabric basket into the yarn basket and smooth the fabric down, and tack them together with matching yarn. Voila!  fabric lining inside and out. Creating a lovely, structured, lined basket capable of holding the most lovely of jewelry, if I do say so myself.

I did something similar to structure the “flower lid” by adding a circle of plastic canvas to the bottom of the lid. I also obviously added the brown lid bottom to suggest the dirt the flowers are growing in.  In the original there is no need for this bottom.  Apart from the canvas, the lid is mostly stuffed with fiberfill.  The crocheted bottom structured with plastic canvas is the lovely structural finishing touch that makes the lid match the bottom in shape and style. I don’t want to say more beyond that, because I don’t want to give away June’s clever pattern.

I also added a “lip” to the top and bottom of the crocheted pieces in white by adding two rows – I crocheted around twice in both the back loop and front loop of the last row of the top and bottom.  The point of the lip is to create a way to fit the basket together in a neat way. (sorry for the fuzzy picture below)  I did this before attaching the fabric.  You can see the bottom of the lid including the “dirt” bottom and lip in the picture of the two halves also.

So that was my Mother’s Day gift to my mom!  She loves jewelry and violets and purple, what better way to tell her her crafty daughter loves her than to make something out of the things she loves?