I solved my camera issues–sadly, with help from my mother! So, very quickly here are some things I’ve made since we got our beautiful new mac. Which now works beautifully.
Easter dress, using Oliver and S ice-cream dress pattern… And the finished play mat, front and back.
Because I have passed on attending my daughter’s school auction four years in a row, I donated a handmade baby quilt made-to-order, to assuage my guilt. It has been really interesting making something to another person’s taste. Teal, gray, and black? Really? I tried for some red, some orange, some yellow, but the quilt recipient knows what she wants. So, here is a bad picture of the quilt top, before sewing it up. It’s much more traditional than something I would usually make, but have to say I’m pretty pleased. It looks so quilty!
The pattern is adapted from Quilting for Peace. I love this book, and the principle behind it. This is as close as I’ve come to a charity quilt, but I’m inspired!
Where have I been?? I’ve been crafting away but sadly cannot figure out how to download from my old camera to my new mac. So sad and frustrating. But I did make a gorgeous play mat for my friend who is expecting a baby in July. I modified the “Pokey the Play Mat” pattern from Boo Davis’s book Dare to Be Square. The colors are really appealing for a baby–bright but not harsh. Plus, I had almost all the same fabrics that she used, on hand–scary! Her pattern has a cute snail face; mine is just the log cabin square. Why? Because I don’t like snails. Sorry garden molluscs.
I highly recommend this book if you are looking for a modern approach to quilting. Boo Davis makes heavy metal inspired quilts (really), so go figure. But she still respects the skills and traditions of old-fashioned quilting, which is a really appealing mix. I also like how she uses simple, traditional patterns, like a log cabin, and transforms them with the use of color and clever graphic design to make something totally modern. She also has a wicked sense of humor.
Abe was indifferent. Zeke was a step up from that–fond? bemused?–whatever implies a distant affection. It was clear: neither of my kids toppled head over heels in love with the dollhouse I rescued from the curb, took home and painted, papered, and decorated with homemade furniture and–get this–a miniature Frank Stella.
I mean, I went through a lot of (happy) trouble working on that thing. To make the Lilliputian furniture, I drew up little elaborate blueprints. My husband then took the plans to his architecture firm and asked the model shop to cut the pieces to size. (Did the model shoppers ever figure out the identity of the “client”? Was it, in fact, completely obvious?)
I sewed tiny pillows & stitched mini felt blankets. I made side tables out of those plastic thing-a-ma-bobs that come in the middle of pizzas. Bunk beds. Books as big as postage stamps. A bath mat the size of a match box.
My family (and the model shoppers) humored my obsession with the small scale. They regarded me with polite–and always kind–detachment. But in the ten years since, I’ve learned something important:
Sometimes, it takes a village to love a dollhouse.
First it was Sophia Alvarez, my seven-year-old neighbor. When she wasn’t constructing a Playmobil megalopolis in her bedroom, she’d come over and rearrange the dollhouse furniture for me. Over the years came other caretakers–Addie, Lila K., Lila M., Sophie U., Sophie B., Mary, Danny, Norman, and every teenage babysitter I have ever hired. It ends up I’m not the only one who appreciates the little things of life.
So if you’re with me, make sure to check out these shrunken exemplars of pristine Modernism in a NYT slide show.
(Photo by Robert Presutti for the New York Times)
Or creep yourself out with this slideshow of shoebox crime scenes beautifully photographed by Corinne May Botz in The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.
Or admire this 23-room, 5-story house made by Faith Bradford, in this online tour. You can also see it in person at the National Museum of American History in D.C. (And yes, I was just in Washington for school vacation week. Guess what? No one in my family wanted to go see Faith’s dollhouse with me. Sigh.)
This is what I’ve been up to this week: folding paper! Specifically, cranes–for a “1,000 crane” fundraiser at my son Zeke’s preschool for those affected by the recent earthquake in Japan.
Maybe you are making origami strawberries (like this one we bought at another Japan fundraiser at Abe’s elementary school)
or contributing in another way, but if you are a quilter, Gather Here, the fabric store/stitch lounge at 370 Broadway in Cambridge is offering a couple of novel ways to join the effort for Japan:
Virginia also posted about an effort by Quilter’s Newsletter to gather quilts from Amerian quilters for those in need in Japan. If you have a quilt (any size, baby to adult) you’d like to send, the information is here. The deadline is April 30.
homemadecity.com 