Spirit Cloth

P is for Pumpkin

Alphabet Soup is getting  a seasonal update.

Remember Soup?

Alphabet soup. (there's a category for it if you are new here)  You might remember if you've been hanging around for a while.  I am working on the Red Lion.  R is for Red Lion.  Long time in process, this cloth.  An alphabet sampler.  A sea of stitches and so many more to go.  It was freeing really.  To sit and stitch on something that was  about nothing more than stitching.  Continuing.  Just fun.  Fun to look back and discover old thoughts.  Fun to see how my approach has changed.  This would be such a great  gift.   Wish I had a grandchild. 

goings on

so the friday fun spilled over and i find myself thinking again about the flow of one thing into another. the blending of moments, like stew or soup. we are soup, yes. or wine maybe, but whatever it is we are always brewing.  i suppose everything i touch right now becomes sun moon stars related. but it is interesting really to pick up an old cloth in a new moment and see how you approach it with new eyes.  maybe stop to count how many eyes you have after all this time. use them to revise , reconsider or simply look. maybe close them all at once and open them one at a time. or the other way around.

a bit of work is due on alphabet soup.  i am thinking of the alphabet as something that might evolve, with self. i know juggling has taken on a whole new meaning.

if my pictures seem a bit dark, it's because there is no sun here for days. it fluctuates from dark to darker and back.  hard to tell where you are in time really.

(there is a category for alphabet soup if you are not familiar with the cloth)

drifting back

yes i am back. why?   because i feel unusually rested. because i have never before seen such a winter sky and i needed to share that. because i am enjoying so much the characters that have appeared in my c2c3 giveaway. and because some one asked me what ever happened to the alphabet soup cloth.  here it is and it makes a great draft stopper.  larger cloth can be very useful, even in process. so i guess i am back. once again without capital letters. because i can't deal with it really... this correct grammar thing. so for those of you who called me lazy...stitch me up a cloth by hand why don'tcha. a large one. ha.

a quilt as a learning curve

alphabet soup is a learning quilt for me. it was my first real sized machine free pieced quilt... a method i learned from tonya. and now that i am hand quilting it i am learning a few more things. when machine piecing lots of small pieces the seams become a bit of a problem in adding thickness. i used lots of different kind of fabrics so i aggravated the situation a bit. i think i will switch to ironing seams out flat from now on. just to reduce the thick spots (i tried that on some smaller pieces and it seems to help).  even though i started using 3 ...i have switched to 2 strands of floss  because combined with the larger kantha style stitch it makes a more drapey cloth and a softer surface (it is a baby quilt) ...AND i can squeeze the double strand into a small eye needle which is easier to get through the seams. i have also started to quilt the surface completely before applying an applique so i only need to quilt the applique to the top surface and not all the way through.
.....an alphabet quilt should be a learning quilt so i am adding all kinds of conversation pieces.  what a great opportunity for story telling at bedtime. the S itself became the Snake it stands for and the it sits near a Sunflower and under a Shibori Sky. the Snails have not arrived yet because they move so Slowly.