Celebrate Doilies Podcast Adventure
Installing Celebrate Doilies in Austin last week was an adventure, which became even more exciting when Casey of www.kcknits.com came by the German Free School to interview me for Episode 95 of the www.verypink.com podcast.
In a testament to how well social media can work, Casey told about how she found me through Twitter. I had tweeted about a crochet sample book on loan to me from Gwen Blakley Kinsler, the Crochet Kween. Casey saw a retweet, read about Celebrate Doilies, and messaged me.
For the interview, we both wore clip-on microphones, even though her recorder had very cool directional microphones attached to it. I’ve learned a lot about recording voices in the last few months, and you definitely need a microphone close to the person who is speaking. Clip-ons are a pain, because their long cords tangle so easily and they limit your movement, but they are much less expensive than the fancier alternative.
We talked about how the idea of Celebrate Doilies came to me, back in 2015. Casey asked about some of the stories people have told me about their family heirloom doilies, and I was glad to tell them. After the interview, she photographed the exhibit, which we had just finished putting up.
You can listen to the podcast online at https://verypink.com/2018/05/02/podcast-episode-95-celebrate-doilies/ or wherever you get your podcasts.
Casey added some history about the German Free School in her own blog post about the podcast, which you can read at www.kcknits.com/blog/doilies.
Visit Celebrate Doilies in Austin
It’s May, so come and see the Celebrate Doilies exhibit at the German Free School, 507 East 10th Street, Austin, Texas! It is open for viewing on Wednesdays and Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. all through the month of May 2018.
The German Free School was built by German immigrants in the 1800s (I think), using rammed earth. It’s a lovely, historical building, and the perfect backdrop for my doily-inspired art quilts, Sandi Horton’s poetry, and doily heritage stories about crocheters of the present and past, and their work.
The exhibit will also be on display during Maifest, May 12, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Read more here.
There’s metered parking just outside the building on 10th Street, and you should be able to see the big, blue, baling twine doily from the sidewalk.
Sandi and I will present “What to Do with Oma’s Doilies” on Sunday, June 3, 2018, at 3 p.m. That will be your last chance for a while to see Celebrate Doilies in Austin.
Many thanks to the staff at the German Free School and to my sister-in-law Carolyn and my daughter Eva for their work installing the exhibit last week.
Celebrate Doilies on Red Heart Blog
Please enjoy a short, sweet blog post about the Celebrate Doilies exhibit on Coats & Clark’s Heart Strings, a blog by Red Heart Yarns, where you’ll get an insight into the secret power of doilies!
Celebrate Doilies in Comanche
The Celebrate Doilies exhibit was at the 4 North Event Center in Comanche, TX for a week in March. The vintage building on the courthouse square matched the vintage doily wall hangings and posters beautifully.
You might say that Comanche is in northwest Central Texas, and it is one of the last few stops before the great expanses of West Texas begin. Buildings around the courthouse retain their attractive western flair, and decorated bicycles are permanently parked in front of several businesses. I passed this one on my way to and from the car, unloading wall hangings and doily heritage posters. Someone had fun embellishing it with old crochet, and I took it as a good omen for the exhibit.
I hung several pieces, including House of Crochet, Sweet Home, and Afternoon in the enclosed patio at the 4 North Event Center. The natural light is perfect for viewing and photographing artwork. The space feels good, and I told Charles I’d love to have my living room on that patio.
Light from the patio streams through French doors leading into the elegant main room, where I displayed the doily heritage posters and several wall hangings, like Crochet Comets. I love how the celestial elements of comets and a sunray come together in this photo.
Another set of French doors leads to the Beer Garden, which is welcoming and comfortable. German-style food is served a few days of the week. We are definitely coming in for a German meal someday, without doilies, to enjoy the Gemütlichkeit.
I enjoyed seeing friends and meeting doily enthusiasts during the week Celebrate Doilies was in Comanche.
Celebrate Doilies is a traveling exhibit. If you’d like to see the exhibit at a gallery near you, please ask the venue manager to contact me at the email address on the TextileFusion home page. We can work it out!
Sweet Picot Shamrock for St. Patrick’s Day
You still have a few days before St. Patrick’s Day to crochet a shamrock table mat or ornament!
The pattern is part of my “Sweet Picot Heart” collection, available through Ravelry. 
The Shamrock is part of the “Sweet Picot Heart Motif and More” pattern, which also includes
- the Sweet Picot Heart motif
- a heart table mat
- written and charted instructions photos to help you visualize the
instructions better - how to join heart motifs
- how to do an invisible join at the end of the last round
- the inspiration for the pattern
- nice suggestions for using the heart motifs
For each “Sweet Picot Heart and More” sold, I will donate one dollar to the Comanche (TX) All Pets Alive group, which compassionately cares for stray pets until their owners are found or until new homes are found for them.
Santa Train Finished on Time
All kinds of things happened last fall. I was going to add, “as usual,” but really, more than the usual stuff happened last fall. My final Christmas in July report got forgotten in the shuffle.
The good news is that the Santa Train was finished on time!
In Week 13, I finished the second candy cane and did the wreath and gift box for the train.
Week 14 was about putting a bow on the wreath and starting the teddy.
The teddy and a Christmas ornament for the train’s roof were the jobs for Week 15.
The teddy bear turned out so cute, I wanted to show him to you up close.
And finally, we come to Week 16, when I made a green gift box with lots of little embroidered exxes (xs?), sewed it and the second candy cane on the train roof, and attached the hanging loop. Yay! It’s finished!
We hung the Santa Train inside our front door, where every time we went in or out, it sparkled thrillingly.
I have two more Christmas kits somewhere. They are probably in a box in my parents’ storage barn, that we have forgotten about since we moved back to Texas in 2003. If they show up, my Christmas in July 2018 project will be finishing one of them. If I can’t find them in a last ditch effort to empty all the moving boxes (argh!!), here’s a peek at my Plan B for 2018.
Celebrate Doilies on the Move!
If you hurry, you can see the Celebrate Doilies exhibit at the W. K. Gordon Center for Industrial History, in Mingus, Texas. The exhibit will be there through March 15, 2018.
The photos are from the presentation Sandi Horton and I gave on Sunday, February 25th. My topic was “What to Do with Grandmother’s Doilies.” Sandi read poetry about her family’s needlework, and played a musical prayer on her Indian flute.
The Gordon Center has artifacts and displays about the company town of Thurber, Texas. In many a Texas town with red brick streets, the bricks were made in Thurber. When I was there with friends, we watched a film about the town. It seemed like a wonderful community, but it was difficult to move away from Thurber. Workers were paid in company scrip, which merchants outside the town wouldn’t accept as payment.
Plan to spend some time, if you go, to see the exhibit and the permanent displays and film about Thurber.
From March 19th through the 25th, 2018, Celebrate Doilies will be at the 4 North Event Center in Comanche, Texas. The hours will be Monday-Friday, 4-7 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. I’ll be there the whole time, so come and see me!
Sandi Horton and I will give a short presentation on Saturday, March 24th, at 2 p.m.
Celebrate Doilies is booked at the German Free School in Austin, Texas, in May 2018. Many of the doily wall hangings will be in a special showing of quilts at Tarleton State University, Stephenville, Texas, in July. I’ll post more information about those venues in the months to come.
Fishy Cento
Britain’s National Gallery has a film series called Art Gold. On Twitter recently, the Gallery urged people to watch, using #artgold. People and museums took over the hashtag, tweeting golden artifacts, golden jewelry, and art of gold. What a wonder!
I got into the act, too, because my #artgold story was inspired by a painting in the National Gallery.
It started when I was preparing for my first solo exhibit, which opened in the winter of 2002 at the Colour Museum in Bradford, U. K. In other words, I was working on or thinking about wall hangings most of the time.
“Mom, will you ever make me a wall hanging?” asked my then six-year-old daughter, Eva, with a look of yearning on her sweet face. How could I resist? She loved fish, so we agreed on a fishy wall hanging.
The fish in her own aquarium were the models, but they didn’t take orders very well. “Hey, fish! Hold still, so I can draw you!”
Nope.
They darted around, ignoring me. Eventually, though, I cobbled together a pretty good sketch of two of Eva’s fish, and they appear in this piece. Speedy is the Golden Orfe and I think the red fish is Bulgey.
When it came time to create a background for these wooly fish, my process came to a standstill. The aquarium water was clear, so the background to the actual fish was the wall behind the aquarium. Black makes bright colors pop, but black background seemed too dark and stark. People think of water as being blue, but even if it is blue, you wouldn’t see the blue-ness in the small area the wall hanging portrayed.
My Sheffield friends Betty Spence and Helen Neale and I met for a coffee one day during my struggle (unbeknownst to them) with the background color. Helen had been to the National Gallery in London. She told about a painting of a horse, which had a golden background. No pastures or barns to distract from this horse—oh no—just the horse, surrounded by gold. The painting was probably Whistlejacket (c. 1762), by George Stubbs.
Bingo! I had my background color. Thank you, Helen!
What in the world is a Fishy Cento? ‘Cento’ is an interesting word I found one day when I was reading the dictionary, looking for words with “cent” in them. It can mean ‘a patchwork garment’ or ‘a collection of verse.’ I recommend reading the dictionary. It can be fun.
The fish have patchwork garments, so there’s that. I also wrote some fishy verse to use on this wall hanging, but as the piece progressed, it became obvious that the poems wouldn’t fit into the picture. They’ll have to wait for Fishy Cento 2.
Snowman Boards Santa Train
Last time I reported on my Christmas in July project, the Santa Train was being chased by a headless snowman. Poor guy! At least he got a head (ahead?) in Week 9, but it would be two more weeks before the snowman was finally able to climb aboard the train.
The snowman’s face had a lot of embroidery. Anymore, I need help seeing the lines on the felt for embroidery, and also seeing to thread the beading needle for sewing on sequins. Charles’s old reading glasses do the trick! With my bifocals and his reading glasses, I can see really well at a very specific distance from my eyeballs. Just an inch further or closer, and everything goes out of focus. Charles fondly calls me “six eyes” during these times.
Anything with stripes quickly runs through my quota of ten pieces per week. For instance, on the snowman’s scarf, each red stripe is one piece, plus two red fringe pieces. It doesn’t seem like I made much progress in Week 10, but I definitely used ten pieces.
In Week 11, the snowman got his arms, and I could finally sew him onto the train. He still needed a candy cane to help stabilize his grip on the engine. Yep, the candy cane is another stripey piece that stretched out over two weeks.
I finished the snowman’s candy cane in Week 12, and started a second cane.
Four weeks to go! I’ll be sewing little gifts and ornaments to decorate the train. Yay!
Crochet Flowers on Jacket Lapels
My linen jacket needed something. It needed to be more interesting, beautiful, cool. What would a crochet flower lady do? Break out the No. 10 crochet cotton, choose a flower from Crochet Bouquet, and embellish the lapels!
If you read my previous post, you may remember that one of the reasons we have Crochet Bouquet at all, is because I was sad that the crocheted flowers on commercial clothing were all so similar. Most of the crocheted flower applique patterns I found were all about round flowers.
Okay, yeah, most flowers are circular. But not all flowers! AND you don’t always see a flower straight-on. That’s why some of the flowers in Crochet Bouquet and Crochet Garden are not round, or they are observed from a different perspective.
Oval Center Rose is one of those. It has been one of my favorites all these years. I chose it for my jacket lapels. Rose Leaf, also from Crochet Bouquet, seemed right for the greenery. For size contrast, I included the Small Flower from Crochet Garden.
I chose to crochet pink flowers, but which pink? I went to my color consultant, also known as my younger daughter. “Which colors, Ella?” I asked. “The cool pink and the minty green, or the warmer pink and the yellower green?”
“Why not use them all together, Mom?” she said.
So I did. After crocheting and steaming them flat, I sewed around the edges of the leaves and flowers, then I stitched around the oval center of the Oval Center Rose. Mother-of-pearl buttons added just the right vintage look to the grouping.
I finished it in the morning, and wore it in the afternoon to the opening of Celebrate Doilies at the Dora Lee Langdon Center in Granbury, Texas. While in Granbury, I visited a resale shop called Bella, where I bought another linen jacket. That means more crocheted flower embellishment in the future!