Someone else's trash becomes my treasure

Last year my good friend moved to Atlanta, and realized that she owned a whole lot of stuff that she didn't want to take with her.  So she held an open house of sorts, in which friends were encouraged to take home anything in two big upstairs rooms.  I of course could not resist, and found all sorts of treasures, including but hardly limited to a guillotine blade paper cutter and a 1950 edition of Webster's New International Dictionary.  I've been using the paper cutter for myriad projects, and cutting up the dictionary for art.

But today I want to talk about a special find: a huge box full of the ribbons and medals that my friend's daughter won in a long and successful swimming career, spanning many years from childhood through high school.  The minute I saw them I knew they were perfect fodder to be turned into "postage stamps" for a grid quilt.

The ribbons were two inches wide, with woven selvages, already a bit stiff with some kind of sizing, but I backed them with nonwoven polypropylene for a little more substance.  As soon as the backing was sewed to the ribbons, I sliced them into squares with a pinked-edge rotary blade, and then continued with many more rows of stitching in different colors.  There was no fraying or raveling (a big improvement over previous postage stamp projects) and the gold letters and pictures sparkle when the light hits them right.  

I watched a great deal of trash TV last August while mindlessly feeding hundreds and hundreds of squares through the sewing machine, and eventually counted and bagged all the finished squares and stashed them away in a big shoebox.

I pulled the shoebox out again in April and started sewing the squares together into a grid.  Having learned from experience that the larger the quilt, the more tedious it is to sew it together, I decided to make three separate panels and hang them as a tryptych.  It was so easy to put these smaller panels together that I zipped through the final assembly stage in less than a week.

And now the finished quilt -- "Competition" -- is hanging in the 20th Anniversary Show at PYRO Gallery.  I think it looks great, and it was probably the most painless major piece that I have ever made!  

 

Cleaning up the slut dolls

Being the kind of grandmother who doesn't buy toys for the kids, I had been blissfully ignorant of slut dolls -- the modern-day Barbies that present their own warped vision of women, except even worse.  I was too old to play with Barbies as a kid but have certainly read reams of commentary about their figures, their wardrobes, their roles in society, mostly agreeing that Barbie is no friend to feminists.  Now that bad vibe has morphed into slut dolls, those that look like hookers on the stroll, complete with collagen-fat lips, too much eye makeup, stilettos and waistband-length skirts.

But my friend Denise has discovered a way to repurpose slut dolls into lovely little girls with no makeup, appropriate clothing and a nice, innocent look, and giving them to her 7-year-old granddaughter.  It all started when she happened upon the work of an Australian artist and mom, Sonia Singh, who has created a little empire of Tree Change Dolls.  Apparently you can buy them on eBay, but Denise was drawn to the directions for DIY.

It's simple -- rescue doll from thrift store, remove the painted face with acetone, then paint on age-appropriate features.  Strip off the hookerwear and make better clothes.  Cut and restyle hair as needed.  Slice down the feet.

Here's a before-and-after pair.  Denise enlisted our friend Bette to crochet a sweater for this new look doll, who also got a haircut and a lovely new hat.  Fortunately she already owned a pair of full-length jeans, even if the sequins are a bit flashy. New shoes or boots are still to come.

Denise has several dolls in process, a worthy endeavor for any artistic grandmother.

Mile-o'-handwork 1 -- genesis

Several years ago my art-and-walking pal Debby Levine, who is a master knitter, had a brilliant idea -- she would make a mile of knitting.  We talked about this idea over a period of weeks as we walked.  The more we kicked the tires, the more we realized how big a task that would be.  She revised her plans to make the knitting narrower, but it was still daunting. Then in a moment of temporary insanity I said to her "You make a half mile of knitting and I'll make a half mile of crochet."

I thought this would be a good way to use up those bits and pieces of yarn left over from afghans, and for a while that was going great, until I used up all my bits and pieces.  Then I started grabbing all the yarns from grab bag and crocheting them.  My crochet is about four inches wide, most happy when I'm working with low-rent acrylic yarn.  I roll the finished strip into a jellyroll until it gets wide enough to fit into a banker's box.

My grandson thinks these bundles look like cakes, so that's what I call them.  At any given moment I have several going, one in a bag in the car to take with me to meetings or other public events, one in the studio, a couple on the sofa where I watch TV, one in the living room to work on if company comes.

I tried to resolve that I would never buy any yarn for this project but simply use leftovers.  But about a year ago I got desperate for raw materials and bent my principles enough to go to the Good Garbage Store's going-out-of-business sale, where I got about 50 skeins of yarn for about 35 cents each.

I have five or six boxes so far, five cakes to a box.  A couple of years ago I took everything I had finished over to the house of a friend with a really long room, and we unrolled and measured all the cakes.  It seemed that I was maybe 20% of the way to my half mile, which didn't seem like all that much progress for all the time I was putting in.  But I am not discouraged.  I will keep crocheting, and I trust that the Lord will provide yarn like manna in the wilderness.  And someday I will display the work.

When all else fails, make placemats

In the late 70s I was an active member of the League of Women Voters, and one of the things I did for the organization was to make a little wall quilt for our office.  I used some nifty red-on-white patriotic print fabric that was produced during the Bicentennial, plus assorted RWB solids and prints.  It hung in the office for many years, until a big remodel/redecoration.  I found the quilt stashed in a closet afterwards, and brought it home with me, where it has been stashed in MY closet ever since.

Recently, in a flurry of cleanup frustration, I came upon the quilt and noted that it was big enough to make four placemats.

I've always joked that no quilt experiment is too weird, because you can always turn it into placemats.  Indeed, I've done that with many projects, including one that was supposed to be a show quilt but just wouldn't get quilted right.  I kept quilting (you know, all those bulgy places will quilt out....) (but they didn't quilt out...) and finally gave up at about 98 percent finished.  That one made a whole lot of placemats!

But my little red, white and blue quilt certainly had no future as a quilt.  Notice particularly the pale gray panel above the bottom LWV -- that was once a rich navy blue.  And the faded panel to the left of the middle LWV also used to be navy.  I thought the reds had held up pretty well until I cut the quilt apart and noticed that the solid red was about four shades darker inside.  I think there have been improvements in dye technology since the 70s, but isn't it funny that some of the fabrics faded like crazy and others stayed pristine?

Here are the placemats.  I will use them on patriotic occasions.