Couldn´t help it!

Wishes coming true in 2010

I´ve got a 2010 calendar print from one of the fabric stores I buy from. It´s not fancy at all.  I decided to recycle it into a radionic or a wishes coming true  wall panel for a very special couple of friends who came over just when I was exploring my recently purchased sewing machine devices.

They plan to build a cottage and buy a new car this year.

These are two goals of theirs I´m aware of.

 I´ve also wished them ...

...money, luck....

... love, friendship...

 ...continuous enlightenment and success...

 Won´t hurt and I´m sure they pursue these too (although they don´t think much of money really).

One of them is an actor. At first I thought the white star would stand for both spiritual enlightenment and success. It didn´t seem clear enough to me, though.

We all know that success is a result of hard work + chance. So, I decided to add a red star standing for   success. Bloody individual effort + heavenly gift of opportunity . Maybe it´s not an evident, self explanatory symbol. If I tell them the idea, though, maybe it will work better than a cristallized, already assimilated symbol.

They chose the fabric that suited their taste better and have also contributed with a few stiches using my new sewing machine. It seemed too delicate for them. They were scared to get it broken, since they´d never used a sewing machine before.

The following day I decided to fool around with the idea of putting together the radionic panel. I can´t say it looks pretty, but, knowing them the way I do, I´m confident they´ll love it.

Hope it works! 

If we all hope so it will work for sure!

I´ve got quilt pox and I´m happy

I´ve realized I´d been affected by some sort of syndrome I couldn´t expain before reading Dena´s thorough explanation about its symptoms and causes. Thanks for that, Dena. (You´ve probably got it too, so you´d better read what Dena has to say about it)

I used my grandmother´s sewing machine since I was 8 or 9. She´d got it in order to sheath my mother´s diappers, back in the beginning of XIX Century. Wow! I was born in the Mid Century myself.  Double Wow!

I don´t remember having seen my grandmother sewing, except for showing me how to use the machine and helping me when I got it stuck. I used to produce my doll´s clothes or tried to. My mother was fond of knitting and crocheting but not of sewing.  So, I guess the machine has been destined to me the day my grandmother got pregnant.

I´ve had a few sewing machine over the years but I´ve got rid of them all, except the one my grandmother had kept. I was reluctant to make it go electrical/portable. Did so last year for lack of space reasons mostly. I soon realized I had made a mistake but then it was too late.

This is it, a victim of the seaside salty wind, the family´s poor sewing and the technician´s invasive and mutilating surgery.

I´ve had a few sewing machine over the years but I´ve got rid of them all, except this old one. I was reluctant to make it go electrical/portable. Finally did so last year for lack of space reasons mostly. I soon realized I had made a mistake but then it was too late.

I know it will always be usefull. One can relly on it. It goes straight and does it beautifully. It allows itself quite a bit of noise and I call it selfconficence.

Having been affected by the syndrome described by Dena, I decided to get a new, fancy machine, though.  Maybe not the state of art but a Singer as well, since I want them both to be friends, and I thought I should be able to get  technical assistance easy and as locally as around the corner, whenever it becomes necessary. Yeah, these new electronic babes are not like the old mechanical ones that never ever stopped.

Now, here my new acquisition. It´s nice, light, easy and doesn´t make noise.

One more reason why I should really learn to quilt.

"The great accomplishments of man have resulted from the transmission of ideas and enthusiasm." Thomas J. Watson

Where do I come from?...

... they seem to wonder... and be willing to find out.

My question is:

where to they think they are going?

Who would blame them?

Anxiety is...

... having a pile of half way done projects + piles of ideas to get started on.

I love painting and drawing and everything handmade that is pretty to look at. I´d figured my experience in this field would help me on the quilting journey I´ve just got started. I hadn´t realized there is a lot about sewing I must  learn and practice. I put my sewing projects aside because they happen not to come out the way I´ve imagined them at first. Guess why?

I´m anxious to get started and don´t save time to draw it beforehands. I pick colors according to what I have in hands, get the squares cut, run to the sewing machine and  generally put them together in the wrong places. Wrong colors in the wrong places... as you can see.

Sewing is not like painting that you may cover whatever you dislike with another layer of  paint. I just feel unable to undo the sewing and starting all over again. So, I go on planting on illtreated ground, telling myself  maybe it will come out better than I had first imagined. It´s a pacifying thought only and it doesn´t last long. Poor soil, shabby crop.

I´ve brought the araucarias composition inside in order to keep staring at it. I´ve commited myself into getting  it finished no matter how disappointing it looks.

This posting sort of compromises me further... I need all the pressure I can get!!!

Back to reality... and to basics

After taking tours from blog to blog and seen very inspiring work, I fell back into my real possibilities at the moment being.

One step at at time, I´ve always been told.  I´m anxious, though, to give a complex project a try. A moment´s sanity showed me I don´t have neither the ability nor the necessary tools yet.

So, decided to get two very simple projects finished before I tackle anything else. This is one of them.

The other one was based on Linda Hohag´s and Linda Carlson´s Patchwork Pantry magazine. The cover shows a large 36 block appliqué quilt, of which I´ve selected no more than 8 designs in order to put a wall hanging together.

Poor pictures above but I´ll try to do better when I get them finished.

Back to work now!...

What a crazy weather

A nice thing about living in Curitiba, on the south plateau where it sits, is that we´re sure a tsunami won´t  reach us up here.

It´s summer time now and  it may (and does) get  uncomfortably warm. Everyone feels miserable, drags oneself around, feels like doing nothing and blames on the temperature. Suddenly, a most terrifying summer rain comes down and it gets chilly.

It warms up again in a short while after the storm is gone and so it goes, until it becomes cold and just in the Fall or earlier - no one can tell for sure.

(... and you thought it never ever got icy cold in the tropics...)

Two things I´ve learned for survival purposes - keeping an umbrella in my handbag and dressing like an onion, with layers of clothes that can be taken out and put on again in parts or in the whole. Large handbags are useful.

An ill tempered bipolar weather that seldom gets nice and when it does it`s just by mistake and then it doesn`t last long. It`s always been so and the global warming sort of makes it worst, causing floads and their unpredictable effects.

The vegetation seems to enjoy it, though. Before my time to turn into a cabagge comes, I`ll go on saying the climate here is contemptible and refuse to go into verbal conversation about it. Having to put up with the weather itself is bad enough. No need to make a mandatory conversation issue out of it,  as the native people seems to think it is. "Good morning! What acrazy weather, isn´t it?" I just smile. I haven´t lived here all my life but I´ve got used to it. Why don´t they?

Nice picture, however, looking at it I can tell it`s either way too warm or...

it`s a mistake soon to be corrected.

Downtown Curitiba in a cloudy (normal) day.

Getting ready

I´ve stayed home alone from Dec. 26th on. People may think I´m so unfortunate but I myself am having a ball. In fact, Lua, hasn´t been gone travelling either (or I´d have gone along with her). 

Xmas was fine, friends and family joined us and we had a real good time. I don´t complain about the lots of work it takes, and truly say it was fun and I´m grateful to have had their loving company. 

After Xmas I just needed some time for myself, though.  I´m so happy to have a few days off. 

No tasks, no daily chores except those I choose to carry on. I´ve spent most of my time online, taking a look at what the "addicted to quilting" people is doing. I go from one site or blog to the other, and other, and other... skip sleeping hours but get my eyes filled with Beauty. It´s worthwhile. 

What I like most is being able to notice particular regional cultural characteristics that make each work special. I understand there are traditional patterns that are repeated, or rather reinterpreted. There is also a modern quilting being developed by artists from various parts of the globe.  There are  the ones (either traditional or modern) which carry the crafter´s  personality and the signature of the artist´s culture. These are the very best.  The ones to last.

We tend to remain unaware of our own cultural symbols because we just take them for granted. Thus, it´s much easier for someone who belongs to another cultural environment to notice and value them.

Language, art and religion are said to carry the main symbols of each culture. Geografic environment is just as important, I think, and  communicate at first glance.  I love to see a kangaroo in a quilt! I immediatelly identify where it´s been created.

Not only images call my attention. Globalization hasn´t, as yet, been able to completely erase our intinctive tendency for the use of color and hues of color  in the different regions. This is true for clothing, home decorating, anything colored. I could go on writing about this (and will, eventually) but I don´t think it necessary right now because those who create know what I mean.

Just wanted to mention this so that we all think about the value of including our familiar regional symbols into our works of art. That, I suppose, comes by using our very first choice of motif, color, that which seems the easiest solution and that "lacks sophistication" (... thus not being considered good enough in general). 

It´s said that the more we stick to our cultural tradition the more globalized (because it is more interesting, more informative and new to other peoples) our creative production becomes. This is true in literature, in music, in films, in the fine arts, crafts ... in each and every field of human expression.

Both ashamed for my lacking of technique and proud do have got something accomplished I´m showing here what I´ve done. 

This....

            

           


and this...

I like to think they have a tropical, Brazilian look .

Keep in touch! 
I´d like to hear what you think about this.