felted apartment numbers

old sweaters make great felted works! this one is a house number for the door on our apartment. fun to do and keeps me out of trouble:)

embroidered text messages

in keeping with my love of keeping diaries, i have decided to stitch text messages i receive. i can't keep all of them in my phone and they are such a great snapshot of my life and the lives of those i love. another life-long project, that i will probably never finish, but will have a great time working on!

illustrated comics of everyday life

i have been playing with the idea of doing comics in stitch. so lately i have been drawing a picture, in comic form, of things that come to my mind. i need to develop the characters a little, but i like the idea of transferring these images into stitch.

hand stitching is BEEEAUTIFULL!

been working on alot of older, unfinished projects...must be something about a new beginning or cleaning up the past - who knows? anyway, it's fun. i love the way spiritcloth takes close up shots of her hand stitching. so i decided to do the same. hand stitching is so beautiful to me. i have loved that look since i saw my first hand-stitched quilt when i was a kid. i like the unevenness of hand stitching and the uniqueness of each stitch. i remember back in the day when i used to strive for 14 stitches per inch - ha. st. quilta cured me of trying to make small even stitches.

mrs. daisy sallow's crocheted diary

while spending lots of time in airports and on planes recently, i had plenty of time to stitch. i have added some entries to my
stitched diary.

i like remembering how white lipstick was so vital to my daily existence. and how, even when i was 14, i loved to spend my money on fabric (material, as we called it).

the taylor porkroll can be seen here. it used to be one of my favorite foods. now that i am a vegetarian, i still think about taylor porkroll from time to time...like thinking of an old boyfriend.

this is what our german shephard puppy looked like. also funny that we named him 'snow!' he really did eat our couch.

why is this entry called 'mrs. daisy sallow's crocheted diary?' why not? do you know who daisy sallow is? many thanks to edward gorey for introducing me to mrs. sallow...a muse!

jumping in museums

where has maggie been? i have been jumping in museums...or rather jumping outside of museums. inspired by one of my favorite
blogs
i went to paris with
bh and i was so excited to be around all of the art that i actually forgot to jump once i got into the museum. bh and i had a romantic time and ate delicious patisserie. it's good to be back. i cleaned my studio and am ready for the new year!

'tis the season...

LOVe to all in bloggerland today!

small packages: the LAST MINUTE MAUL

this is what i do in my day job. i work at a local art center in baltimore and was asked to put together a craft event this year. so...what could i do that would be different from all of the other myriad of excellent craft events in our city? i came up with 'Small Packages: the LAST MINUTE MAUL. Locally crafted art no bigger than a fruitcake.' we will see how it goes tomorrow. i can't wait! lots of good local crafters will be there.

scrap crochet scarves for christmas

i have been having a great time using up the yarn in my stash...making scarves for everyone, including me! i HEART crochet.

portland and baltimore in stitch

for my level 1 opus personal specialism i was working in the theme of cities and combined my two favorite cities - portland maine and baltimore maryland. this piece has wrapped wire, stitched bicycle tubes and a background of maps and a painted cereal box!

contrived work?

i am exploring the idea of contrived work...when is my work contrived and when is it me? here is a piece i just submitted to a show called GATHERING. i was very excited about the work as i was planning and working on it, but the final product is kind of 'so-so.' i am not too wild about it. i guess that 'so-so' work is ok if i am just making a sample for a course, but wondering what happens to my work when it is planned vs when i am doing it just for fun and experimentation? my work that is done just-for-fun seems so much more me and more spontaneous... what do you think? is there a difference between your spontaneous work and your planned work?

a veggie happy thanksgiving

where have i been? i am not sure what has kept me so busy...opus work, for sure. also been busy planning and organizing my new and very fun event at work the LAST MINUTE MAUL.

if you live in the states, thanksgiving is on the way...the annual carnivore fest. it's a hard time to be a vegetarian. thought i'd play along, by showing you one of my altered thrift store sweaters.

xo!

stitching LOVE

playing with paper and paint and stitch and glue and other stuff. LOVE!

more stitched cities

still working on some samples for my opus module, combining the features of two cities: baltimore and portland. i traced the outline of the cityscapes from various photos i took of each city. then i cut up the tracing paper into small square, rearranged the squares into a new arrangement. i took the design from that arrangement and stitched it onto the piece of an old felted sweater.

O yay! for democracy

i am going on a tangent from what i usually write about and opening a door about my personal side. i grew up in a city that was segregated and watched the city go up in flames during the '68 riots. last night, in that same city, i heard sounds of celebration on the streets. i watched my kids generation lose interest in the political process, after i had marched on washington when i was their age. today my kids, and other twenty-somethings told me how excited they were about having voted and having watched Obama's speech. last night BH called me from iraq and we listened to the speech together over the phone. TODAY is a new day in our country, and I think, in the world. O yay for democracy!

there is probably some good art inspiration in all of this, but i am up to my ears in opus homework...back to the drawing board and love to all.

stitching cities

working on my current opus module, focusing on the appearance of line in a cityscape. i took images of the two cities where i spend most of my time: baltimore, maryland and portland, maine. i combined the images in several mediums: photocopies of photographs, wire and stitch. more exploration on cities to come!

painted circles!

playing around with oil pastels. inspired by sue dove's work with color, i am playing with some of the exercises she recommends in her book, painting with stitches.

collage face

playing with the collage style of anne grgich. anne is not only a talented artist, but a good friend. if you get a chance to take a workshop with her, it's well worth it.

banned names list - in stitch!

a while back, i had some involvement with an arts organization, that had a 'banned names list.' this struck me as kind of funny, since we were not a group with any kind of policing authority. one day i was in a mood to stitch that phrase on a piece of cloth that reminded me of lined school paper. then i photocopied the stitching and stitched over the photocopy. it's hard to reproduce your exact same stitches. i guess it's the random spontaneity that i like about stitching - no two stitches are the same, as least not on my work. i have an idea to repeat this odd shaped paper over and over and hang all of them beside each other on a gallery wall.

stitching on a thrift store sweater

i am away for a few days. love to all!

experimenting with textiles

for my personal specialism module, i have to experiment with unusual materials using layering and cutting and twisting and lots of other things.

here are some photos of work samples using paint rags, plastic bags, melted wax, cut up bicycle tubes, wire, fabric strips, pieces of felted sweater, glue, tissue paper, magazine pages, paint, etc. i machine stitched many of the samples, which was experimental for me, as i am much more comfortable hand stitching.

happy bday to BH.

line drawing in stitch

i have been working on stitching some of my line drawings of everyday life. here is a sketch of BH and me having lunch last year in a park when we were living in portland, maine. BH is eating his usual lunch time hotdog and i am having vegan food from little lads.

while i was working on this piece i discovered a kindred stitching spirit in the work of Iviva Olenick.