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today, two days in the middle, and then Friday

counting down again.         and having looked this extra time at these pieces of cloth on the wall,  not finding any changes to make….at least i think so….decided to take it down and baste the central pieces down so that it can be put up on the wall and taken down to work on without all the pins.   did i say this already?,  last week when at the ReStore, the Habitat for Humanity resale store of all stuff imaginable in Albuquerque, i got a perfect door to set on the table in the Room.  it's clean, new, unpainted, and best of all hollow, so light weight.  if it turns out that i actually might want to EAT on the table,  that can happen.    so…the lighting, hence, color of these pics is not all that correct but here we are.

and again…need to say that it is Jude's lizard cloth at the top,  the gift from her when i was struggling in the Patchwork Beasts workshop.  it will remain at the top of this cloth that i am thinking of as the Cape of What's Next cloth.  

002

005

and then,  these are the side panels to this central piece.   am thinking to keep them seperate  to make it easier to work on.  maybe.  003

today, two days in the middle, and then                           ~Friday~ 
 
 

 

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29 responses to “today, two days in the middle, and then Friday”

  1. nance Avatar
    nance

    restless? filled with anticipation? you hve done so much preparation! and the thing i really love the most is that very simple grey rectangle filled with kantha on the off white background. the simplicity and holiness of it.

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  2. handstories Avatar
    handstories

    building blocks come to mind.

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  3. Eva Ucgatwork Avatar
    Eva Ucgatwork

    Nice studio! When Jude announced that “Magic Diaries” were also about one big cloth I shivered….I have got a real small table to work on. I always longed for a seperate room – but no chance!
    And you really use it well!

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  4. nance Avatar
    nance

    so …question. what about the back?

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  5. Nancy Avatar
    Nancy

    I noticed this piece right away too. It looked like a door/house to me…in the center…an entrance to where? to what? Mmmmm….
    Grace your title struck me as ‘anticipation sandwhich’
    And you look so ready!

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  6. nance Avatar
    nance

    i mean… will the base sheet be the back? and then what about the stitches? or do you make two of these and quilt them together? maybe this is a question for jude… but it has confused me.

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  7. Nancy Avatar
    Nancy

    Well, I want to hear the answer because it confuses me too!

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  8. nance Avatar
    nance

    i am in good company then…!

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  9. jude hill Avatar
    jude hill

    just watching.

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  10. nance Avatar
    nance

    a little bird in the corner?

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  11. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    it’s rain

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  12. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    i am

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  13. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    hmmmmmmmmm

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  14. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    Eva…i should post some new pics of this little tin
    house i live in. and this Room, this Room was a
    screened in back porch. my daughter and i cut 14ft of
    the wall of the trailer out with a Sawzall, and made
    that porch into part of the house. pretty ify workmanship
    womanship, but…here it was.
    the door balanced on the round table works really well.
    also and again, living alone gives a lot of freedom to
    using space in so many ways.
    and also…remember that Jude said a Big cloth can be
    small in size….????……~

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  15. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    no answer to this yet, but i don’t think i would want
    to cover the stitches. i love the mess of stitches on
    the backs of things….they show how it all went

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  16. Tammy Avatar
    Tammy

    I love reading your explanation of how this room/studio came to be .. i’d bet if many of us sat in a real time circle with our stitching and talked about our lives and circumstances we’d find many of us are resourceful in so many ways. I love this image of you cutting with a sawzall into the side of your trailer to add this new room. IT sounds like some of my projects. Although I live in a rented house that my landlord hates so he doesn’t care what I do.. i haven’t made any changes to it but sometimes I feel like I am camping inside my house. haha .. and I love the cloth you are doing .. love that half circle that looks like a door into sunshine. .. it looks like it will be a wonderful piece.

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  17. Eva Ucgatwork Avatar
    Eva Ucgatwork

    Hi Grace,
    Small it may be – but it looks inviting and comfortable. So let’s work out some magic in small and comfortable places …all around the world!
    eva

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  18. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    big magic in small places

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  19. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    this home is very much like a piece of cloth, woven,
    mosaic, stitched together. it is full of flaws. and
    i too refer to this whole place, indoor/outdoor as
    a permanent campsite. it’s most like that.
    i used to have a “normal” house in the other life which
    i also loved. but this one, well, this one is really
    something. a once in a lifetime experience.
    and resourceful. i like that word a LOT. there is such
    great pleasure in learning to be resourceful.

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  20. Vicky Avatar
    Vicky

    hehehe…..we used to call it ‘remodelling by chainsaw’.

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  21. Vicky Avatar
    Vicky

    i’m with you all about messy backs…in high school the home ec teacher told someone her work was perfect, because the back looked the same as the front…imagine my surprise! well, mom never said mine had to be perfect, so pshaw!

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  22. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    i wish we had a movie of it. neither of us really had
    any real idea or plan. just that i wanted to do it and
    she was game. sawzalls are so VIOLENT
    and for real. that whole side of the house was shaken
    and all the electrical lines in it came loose and then
    looser and looser. this winter i had to find someone to
    reconnect them.
    amazingly enough, though, it WORKS. it is the most
    beautiful room ever, this Room.

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  23. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    they are like some kind of language

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  24. Vicky Avatar
    Vicky

    way too funny! sawzaws, how my men pronounce it, are the worst for noise and shaking. i always want to laugh when watching one of the guys using it, but am afraid the saw-karma will turn on me by letting them get hurt.

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  25. Tammy Avatar
    Tammy

    its so tempting to just say .. amen sista .. haha .. well I guess I did .. but that one word that we both mentioned being RESOURCEFUL…. that is a most satisfying thing to know about. I can’t tell you how satisfying (but you may already know) it is to fix my own lawn mower, water pump, hot water heater or roof. I guess the other word that goes with resourcefulness is self reliant. But sometimes you just need a friend .. and those are great to have. 🙂

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  26. Nancy Avatar
    Nancy

    I saw an exhibit at The Fowler @ UCLA (1999 Threads of Light: Chinese Embroidery from Suzhou and the Photography of Robert Glenn Ketchum)once of the most dainty, intricate Chinese embroideries where the front and the back were the exact same picture. And I mean exact!!! I was astounded! Some of them were exact…and I mean exact copies of photographs. The museum book: http://www.amazon.com/Threads-Light-Embroidery-Photography-Cultural/dp/0930741714
    And if you’re are out this way: http://www.robertglennketchum.com/index.php#mi=1&pt=0&pi=25&s=0&p=-1&a=-1&at=0
    I would highly recommend peeking in on this!
    I on the other hand, had the meanest jr. high sewing teacher! She made me rip out Everything…more than once! lol Makes me even proud to be sewing at all, she made it such an unpleasant experience.

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  27. Vicky Avatar
    Vicky

    nancy i can see doing it because the perfection is what you are striving for, and i admire the hell out of those who can and do. i have never had that drive and am sure i don’t miss it.
    teachers…i can see why the teacher would have you start over and over, but i can also see how boring it could be for a teacher to have to do that, to get the kids to do it right! i am finding with my granddaughters that if i just give them the threaded needle…the piece of fabric….and a little bit of direction, they are doing a bang up job of ‘sewing’. i used to repeat after my mother, “don’t cut out of the middle”, but these days i have changed that tune!

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  28. Eva Ucgatwork Avatar
    Eva Ucgatwork

    You too? Our needlework teacher was a mean old spinster. We had to sew tiny shirts for babies – at that time we did’nt actually know where babies came from ….
    we had to sew white aprons – no colourful fabric! Plain white stuff of the most unappealing kind!
    It took me many years to recover….my grandmother taught me to sew properly and taught me the fun of it.
    eva

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  29. Eva Ucgatwork Avatar
    Eva Ucgatwork

    That’s the spirit!
    eva

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