Rainbow Butterfly with Blue is for sale in my Etsy Shop.
After I used up all the sun fabric for my Scraps of the Scraps Potholders, they led me make more like them. I found the rainbow butterflies and moths and they were just right.
I see the little squares as windows and doorways that take the Rainbow Butterflies and Moths where they want to go. All symbols of transformation, of moving from one place, literally or metaphorically, to another.
The colorful scraps from my Moon and Sun Eclipse Potholders didn’t not want to go to waste. So with them I made something from very little. Unlike the strings too short to tie, these scraps were not too small to sew.
I used the scraps all up and with a help from the other fabric in my stash made my Scraps of the Scraps Potholders.Each one has a little bit of the sun peeking out. A wink to the eclipse, and bit a of the universe.
My Scraps of the Scraps Sun Potholders are $25 each + $5 shipping and you can buy them in my Etsy Shop, just click here.
In the attic of my mind I have a box labeled, That Thing About Short Strings. I don’t know about the rest of the world, but here in the US, of a certain generation or maybe more than one, collecting string that is “too short” is a “thing”.
I got this message from Susan today…
“Your post today about your *scraps from scraps* potholders made me smile! I love the idea of even using the scraps from scraps to create yet something new again! When I was growing up…..my Father told me a story of when his grandmother died…..and they had gone through her house, clearing it of her belongings. In her attic….they found not only two boxes full of balls of string (which she knotted together and apparently used often)……and yet another box carefully labelled *string that is too short to use otherwise*.”
Poet Donald Hall wrote a book called “String Too Short To Be Saved” about his memories of summers on his grandparents farm. My friend Mary Kellogg wrote a poem based on a box of string she found in her mother’s house that was labeled “String too short to tie.”
As for me I do have a string collection, but it’s in the category of Susan’s great-great grandmothers first two boxes of string that is long enough to roll into a ball, even if it’s only a small one.
Although I do have a plastic baggie in my studio filled with “scraps too small to sew“.
String Too Short To Tie By Mary Kellogg
fiber of life kaleidoscopic twisting and turning unraveling spears of time in concert with out souls stepping into our days and nights
decisions are made cementing lasting friendships if severed the cut is deep never to be tied again it is unraveled to roll about in nebulous thoughts prodding conscience with questions
another fiber swings into place a misplaced fiber strong remembrance short of life anchored we choose to remember
Jon meditating in the Reading Room at the Williams College Museum
I do it often, but didn’t realize it until I was standing in front of the Larry Rivers painting at the Williams College Museum yesterday. The painting is large probably 8’x10′ if not bigger. It’s an abstract of one woman painted in three different outfits.
I look at the brush strokes, the shapes, lines and other marks made on the canvas and I imagine painting them. I can feel what the bush feels like on the canvas. I can feel how wet or dry the paint is. It’s like I’m tracing the painting with my mind. It’s so visceral I feel like I know what it was like to paint it.
I do this with certain drawings too, tracing the lines with my mind to understand how those lines give the illusion of a three dimensional figure or object.
It’s a way of entering the piece of art, or knowing it on another level.
Then there are installations, like Maya Freelon’s that anyone can enter in a completely physical way.
Freelon’s installation, made of tissue paper and ink, is part of the exhibit called Emancipation.
Maya Freelon said about her art….”As a child, I spent my summers with Granny Franny, and she taught me how to make something out of nothing, how to make a way of no way, and how to make quilts one piece at a time.”
I didn’t take many photos because I just wanted to experience the art in the moment. But I couldn’t resist taking a video of Freelon’s installation. All of her pieces touched me
We are fortunate to live so close to a museum like the one at Williams Collage. It is free (they have a donation jar) and has an every changing permanent collection that is a great mix of historic and contemporary art. And because it is small, I can spend as much time as I want looking at the art and still see it all.
The museum also has a reading room, a quiet, meditative space that is as nourishing to Jon as the art is to me.
In a couple of months I’ll no longer be feeding the animals hay. When that happens I’ll be finished tying my Blue Bailing Twine on the gate post for the season.
But I don’t think I’ll be done with it for good. I can see adding another year of Bailing Twine to it.
I was going to work on my Meditation Tree today. But my work table was still filled with scraps from my Moon and Sun Eclipse Potholders.
I wanted to do something with all this little piece of bright fabric even if I was all out of moons and suns.
So I scoured my stash and found some brightly colored butterflies and moths that had the right feeling for the fabric I was working with.
I took the idea of the squares made from scraps that I came up with yesterday with the suns I had left. I added some new colors and patterns and now the Potholders were transformed. Now they were about Butterflies and Moths.
Two creature that are so much about transformation.
Two days ago the snow fell off the roof on the back porch. It was more than two feet high and packed so hard I had to chop it with the shovel before scooping it up. I piled it up just off the porch in my garden.
That was my only part in creating the snow sculpture that is now in my garden. Mother Nature did the rest.
One of the potholders I made from the scraps of the scraps
I finished sewing together my Last Batch of Ode to The Moon and Sun Eclipse Potholders today. Most of them are sold, but I should have at least three to put up for sale in my Etsy Shop tomorrow.
When I was done, I looked at the scraps on my work table. There were four bits of suns left and lots of brightly colored pieces of fabric.
I couldn’t throw them away and yet, I knew if I tucked them into a little baggie (as I have done before) there’s a good chance they will stay there for a very long time.
And all those little scraps of scraps were kind of begging me to do sew them together.
So I gave in (it wasn’t hard) and from the scraps of the scraps I designed four more potholders.
