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!
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.
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!
Fifty Thousand Copies Sold
Thank you to all the crocheters and people who love them who have bought my book, Crochet Bouquet! As of June 30, 2017, over 50,000 copies of Crochet Bouquet have been sold since its publication in 2008. I am honored by your support.
The book started with a trip to the mall in 2006. While my husband shopped at the big and tall store, our daughters and I sashayed in and out of clothing shops. Oh yes, you can sashay with a stroller. We studied the fashions and gave our considered opinions to each other.
Quite a few clothes had crochet flower appliques. I thought that was so cool! It was inspiring to consider that any crochet could customize clothing and accessories by adding a crocheted flower. But after seeing slight variations of one basic flower, over and over, I became sadly disillusioned. “I could do better than that,” I told myself.
Back at home, I searched the internet for crocheted flower patterns. At the time, there were some pattern leaflets, a couple of German and French crochet flower books, and quite a few single patterns. There was no book of crocheted floral motifs. This was before Nicky Epstein’s crochet flower book was published.
The absence of a flower motif book for crocheters was so glaring, even I couldn’t miss it!
I designed and crocheted some flowers and leaves, photographed them, and sent them out to a publisher. The proposal was rejected, so off it went to the next publisher on the list. That was Lark Crafts, and they accepted the proposal in the summer of 2006.
Designing, crocheting, and writing instructions for the flowers, leaves, and projects for Crochet Bouquet took about ten months.
Halfway through the process, we had some drama. Sterling Publishing, the parent company of Lark Crafts, was publishing another crochet flower book with one of their other subsidiaries. It was Nicky Epstein’s book that I mentioned earlier. She was (and is) such a well-known and loved designer, it seemed silly to publish a competing book by a mostly unknown author.
Luckily, we were able to convince those in charge that the books would have very little overlap. In fact, we thought the books would be different enough that customers might buy both of them. Thank goodness we were allowed to continue with the project.
In May 2008, Crochet Bouquet hit the bookstores, and has been selling steadily ever since. The book has also been translated into Spanish and Russian. Very exciting!
Thank you very much for your part in the success of Crochet Bouquet!
Four Days Left to See Celebrate Doilies
Don’t wait too long! You have only four more days to see the Celebrate Doilies exhibit at the Dora Lee Langdon Center in Granbury, Texas.
Art quilts, stories, and poetry fill the first floor of the historic Gordon Home, beginning with Constant Comets and Sweet Home, which greet you as you walk into the front door.
The two front rooms have fireplaces and bay windows, and I really like how gallery manager Joel Back displayed some of the posters on the mantels.
In one bay window, we decorated the grand piano with Sandi Horton’s family heirloom crochet and poetry.
In the other bay window, you’ll find posters about doilies of the past and modern doilies from Coats & Clark. They loaned designer doilies for us to display as well. The modern doilies are by designers Susan Lowman, Kathryn A. White, and Lisa Gentry.
Come ready to read Sandi Horton’s poetry and about crocheters of the past. Once you’ve been through the exhibit, it’s a short walk to Granbury’s historic town square, where you’ll find great food, coffee, and shopping.
SAQA Quilt Show Opens in Abilene
Today’s Quilts: Art in Stitch, a juried show of quilts by Texas members of Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA) opens today at The Center for Contemporary Art in Abilene, Texas.
I’m pretty excited about the show, because two of my quilts are in it. Gaudi Gaillardia and Antelope Horns are both fairly recent works, and more importantly, they do not include any doilies! All my doily quilts are in the Celebrate Doilies show. I’m glad I had something to enter.
We live about halfway between Fort Worth and Abilene. It’s a two-hour drive to either one, but we seem to head east to Fort Worth more often than not. The show is a good excuse to go west, young woman!
My daughter and a friend are coming along, and we’re going to shop at JoAnn Fabrics and a couple of quilt shops. Naturally, we’ll stop at Starbucks, and we might visit The Grace Museum while we’re there. Hey, you’ve got to take advantage of being in the big city!
The show runs through November 10, 2017, at the Center, which is at 220 Cypress Street in Abilene. An opening reception is planned for Saturday, September 23, 2017, at 7:30 p.m.
After that, Today’s Quilts: Art in Stitch moves to Lubbock, to be displayed through February 2018.
Chugging Along on Christmas in July
Week 2 of working on my Christmas felt kit ended with sequinning and sewing red stripes to the white rail that will eventually be sewn to the bottom edge of the train.
Week 3 was all about sequinning and sewing red stripes, too, because there were so many of them. It was good to finish this, so I could move on to a really exciting week.
In Week 4, the train transformed! I worked a little out of order, because I wanted to sew the appliques onto the green felt before sewing the entire piece to the background. It made sewing easier.
Every time I cut out a felt piece, I put the scraps into a bag for recycling. Bits of thread go into the bag, too. Next time I drive to Austin, I’ll drop the scrap bag (clearly marked “SCRAPS”) into an American Textile Recycling Corporation bin. To find out if ATRS has a bin near you, visit their website at www.atrscorp.com.
