Poets and Paint Rock
Last week was Langdon Review Weekend in Granbury, Texas. The weekend celebrates the publication of the current Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas journal, and features poetry and prose readings, art exhibits and talks, and musical events.
I was pleased to present a talk about my TextileFusion artwork at this year’s event. In conversation with people after the presentation, the subject of Paint Rock came up.
Paint Rock, Texas, is not too far from San Angelo. Native Americans painted interesting and beautiful motifs on overhanging rocks along the river.
How exactly did this happen? I’m racking my brain for the exact phrase or question that caused us to start talking about it, but I can’t remember.
Anyway, for whatever reason, poet karla k. morton asked, “Have you been to Paint Rock?”
I said I hadn’t, but my husband was there and took lots of pictures so I could see how wonderful it was.
“My dear friends own the land that Paint Rock is on,” she said.
“I designed a sweater with images from Paint Rock,” I said. I’m sending her pictures of the sweater.
This was the original sweater, made with Joseph Galler RBC Parisian Cotton, a long discontinued, fabulous cotton yarn. I used US size 3 knitting needles.
Later, I designed a similar sweater with heavier cotton, which was
ed in Southwest Crafts* magazine. Southwest Crafts has been out of print for years, but I still think of it fondly, because my Paint Rock sweater in the magazine was the first pattern I ever
ed for pay.
*”Ancient Indian Pictures in a Knitted Sweater,” Southwest Crafts, Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 7 ff., January/February 1991.
Here Before You Know It
Lately several people I know have said, “I can’t believe we’re already at the end of August,” shaking their heads in disbelief. Today, for the first time this year, I heard someone say: “The holidays will be here before we know it.”
Hearing that made me feel pretty happy with the progress I’ve made on the felt Christmas wreath kit by Bucilla. It’s my Christmas in July project.
The second four weeks are going according to schedule:
Week five. 
Week six. 
In Week seven, all the holly leaves for the wreath are finished, and I got to make a candy cane. 
Now I’m getting into the really fun stuff, with this toy train engine and a peppermint candy. At around 20 pieces, the train took a long time to put together. Totally worth it, though. It is very, very cute–so cute it tugs at my heartstrings.
And my sixteen week project is at the halfway point. Looking good so far! At this rate, it will definitely be finished in time to decorate for the Christmas holidays.
For more frequent updates, please follow me on Instagram @suzannthompson.
9/6/2016–Hi y’all. This poor post got tons of spam comments, so I’m closing comments. Email your comments to me at knitandcrochetwithsuzann at outlook dot com and I’ll post them here.
Pacing Myself for Christmas
I just love sparkly felt Christmas decorations!
They are fun to make, too. Herrschner’s, my favorite mail-order needlework company, has an annual sale on Christmas kits. In a fit of optimism, I ordered two kits back in 2014, thinking I could just make them in my spare time. Ha ha ha hahahahahahaaaaa!
It’s been proven that by pacing myself, I can actually get a kit finished. Blogging and Instagramming about my plan keeps me accountable. So here goes.
The goal is to finish this cute felt wreath and ornaments in time to decorate for Christmas. The kit is by Bucilla. Each week for sixteen weeks, I’ll embroider, embellish, and sew a manageable portion of the project. I started in July, and it should be done in November.
The wreath project fits nicely in a small totebag, along with scissors and a plastic container for the sequins and beads. Contrary to the instructions, which advise keeping the different colors of sequins separate, I put them all together into the container. The day I can’t pick out a green sequin from the container is the day I need to quit sewing felt kits.
I like being able to carry the project along, like I did a couple of Sundays ago. While waiting for my daughter, I lunched at Subway, ate a delicious sandwich, eavesdropped on conversations, and embroidered holly leaves. It’s amazing what you can get done between bites. A very pleasant time was had by me.
Here are the first four weeks’ work:
Week one.
Week two.
Week three.
Week four.
For more frequent updates, follow me on Instagram @suzannthompson.
Red Vases with Crocheted Flowers
This is Red Vases, my latest crocheted flower wall hanging.
How many flowers and leaves from Crochet Bouquet and Crochet Garden can you spot? Many are the samples that appeared in the books. I’m glad to finally find a place for them.
My friend Peggy suggested adding beads to the Bluebells from Crochet Garden. What a great idea!
Read more about the making of Red Vases at Suzann’s TextileFusion (update 2024: now the TextileFusion blog), beginning, middle, and finished.
What are you doing with your crocheted flowers?
Red Vases Complete
Four a day flower sewing worked well for Firewheel Meadow, so I started with that regimen until a more urgent project distracted me.
While appliqueing flowers (not my absolute favorite job in a wall hanging), I listened to an audiobook. Listening helps me stay focused, because I really want to hear the next chapter and so I have to keep on sewing. The book was The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin.
At last, all the flowers were sewn in place. My friend Peggy said, “Those bluebells need something. How about beads?” Again, a different perspective helped. I added the beads.
The wall hanging rejected all but a few of my attempts to add buttons. A Gail Hughes green button nestled comfortably among leaves, a button I made was a good flower center. But mostly, the buttons were mostly too showy and detracted from the flowers.
Okay, so….less showy buttons?
Yes!! I hid small tan buttons among the flowers, adding texture and interest, without drawing too much attention.
Red Vases is finished, and it will make its debut at the Town and Country Quilt Guild Show in October.
Peggy said, “It will win a ribbon.” That would be nice!
Tell Me About Your Doilies!
I’m collecting photos of doilies and stories about them and the people who made them for an exhibit I’m doing next year at the Cross Timbers Fine Arts Council, River North Gallery, in Stephenville, Texas (and beyond, I hope!).
Please join me in celebrating doilies by sharing the stories of doilies in your collection. Maybe you make doilies, or maybe your ancestors made them. Whichever it is, other people will love to read about it.
To learn how you can join in this project, go to Doily Heritage Project information.
See a sample doily story here. www.textilefusion.com/DoilySamplePoster.pdf
The doily shown here was crocheted by my grandmother, Charles Etta Dunlap Thompson. I never met her, but my dad told me she found time to crochet and quilt, even when she was taking care of a household of nine.
By the time she made this doily, my dad and my Aunt Sue may have been the only children left at home. The pattern was published in 1949, when they still would have been in high school.
Finding the publication date was a job for the Doily Detective (me). First I searched “daisy doily crochet pattern.” This returned lots of beautiful doilies, but not this one.
Well…the flowers might be sunflowers, I thought. A search of “sunflower doily crochet” turned up another batch of lovely pieces and hey! There was an image similar to my grandmother’s doily!
A few more clicks took me to a site that offers free vintage crochet patterns. That’s where I learned this doily is called the Black-Eyed Susan Doily.
I searched Ravelry, an online knitting and crochet community, for the Black-Eyed Susan Doily, and found it was published in January 1949 in Coats & Clark O. N. T. #258 Floral Doilies leaflet (pattern #D-207). The pattern also appeared in a leaflet called Floral Doilies for Crocheting.
Like quilts, doilies are an important part of our heritage. Quilts have been studied and written about extensively, but doilies have not. Let’s do something about this!
Flower Arranging for Red Vases
When I’m arranging embellishments for a wall hanging, I really like to get other peoples’ input. It helps me see things from a different perspective.
In the past, my daughters helped me out (and here, too). In April, participants in the International Quilt Festival (Chicago) Open Studios event arranged and rearranged flowers for Red Vases. We discussed the merits of different color combinations, flower shapes, and number of flowers.
Here are a few options we came up with:
Back at home, I consulted these photos while making the final arrangement for Red Vases, and this is it:
Wait! On second thought, this became the really, really final arrangement.
Now to sew all those flowers in place.
Mama Lion Roars Again
Mama Lion, which debuted in a big way last year on World Lion Day, was featured during June 2016 at the Light Space & Time Online Art Gallery, as part of the Animals Art Exhibition, Special Merit Award Category.
I’m pleased to share (or show off, if you want to be truly accurate) the ribbon and certificate I received for having one of my wall hangings in the show.
See Mama Lion in the Animals exhibit at https://www.lightspacetime.com/animals-2016-art-exhibition-special-merit-kr-thru-z/.
You can also see a slide presentation of the show at YouTube (Mama Lion is at 10:30).
Light Space Time encourages entries of all artistic media, but few textile works are shown among the many painted or drawn entries. I can only guess that this is because few fiber artists enter their work. So Fiber Artists, please enter! Light Space & Time posts a new show every month AND the site provides a lot of information for artists who want to show their work to its best advantage.
How Red Vases Began
Quilters and other crafters are generous people! I picked up this long, skinny seed packet panel at a quilt guild meeting—someone was cleaning out old projects and brought it to the giveaway table. The panel was about 11 inches wide and 37.5 inches long.
It lay in my fabric stack for several years, while I contemplated how to incorporate it into a project. Finally it challenged me to design a long, skinny quilt and use it as the backing fabric.
That was the beginning of Red Vases, only they didn’t start out red. Originally I was going to recycle a tan lace sweater. You would be able to see green stems behind the lace and it was going to be great!
Only, as you can see, it wasn’t very great. It was boring.
I dug out some red and red and white checked knitting left over from another project. (Here, too.) Much better!
Luckily this change of vase didn’t set me back too far, because the wall hanging had to be pieced, quilted, and bound in time for the International Quilt Festival in Chicago in April, and time was growing short.
At the Open Studios event at the International Quilt Festival in Chicago, various people joined me in arranging flowers on Red Vases. Our first major decision, unanimously approved, was the choice of Edelweiss over Van Wyk Roses in the little vase.
Patterns for the crocheted Edelweiss and Van Wyk Roses are from Crochet Garden: Bunches of Flowers, Leaves, and Other Delights.
Autumn Leaf Wrap in Love of Crochet
I’m so pleased to have Cute Crochet World’s Horse Chestnut Leaf featured in this lovely wrap! Instructions are in the Fall 2016 issue of Love of Crochet magazine, which will be on the newsstands in August. If you can’t wait that long, you can purchase the digital edition now at www.interweavestore.com/love-of-crochet-magazine-fall-2016-digital-edition.
We don’t have room for step-by-step photos in most magazine instructions, so I’m posting some here. If you’d like some help visualizing the instructions, the following photos should help.
Use your markers! They will help you find your place.
When you join the leaves, place them wrong sides together. You’ll be glad of the markers at this point.
Here’s another view of the leaf join.
After the join, finish the leaf in progress.
The Leafy Trim on the Autumn Leaf Wrap has 24 joined Horse Chestnut Leaves.
The first row of the wrap joins directly to the Leafy Trim.
Row 3 of the wrap joins to the stems and creates their attractive curve.
You can see the join up-close in the photo above. Below, Row 3 is finished.
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For step-by-step photos of the Horse Chestnut Leaf, visit the previous blog post here on Curious and Crafty Readers. (In 2024, there’s only one TextileFusion blog and this is it 😊)