On the Design Wall Now

 It's been awhile since I last posted on my blog. After finishing the crocheted fabric purse, I just wasn't feeling very motivated and in a funk due to all the negative stuff going on in our country. And, why bother making quilts that I can't show anywhere. Why bother dying more fabric, when I am running out of room storing the fabric I've already created? 

But then the urge to create struck again and here's what's up on my design wall now. 

Finished Crocheted Fabric Strips Purse

 Yesterday I finished my crocheted fabric strips purse. This is the second one I've made. It has been a good COVID project because I could just grab my bag of supplies and tools and sit outside with different folks to enjoy catching up with them in a socially distanced manner. Due to the repetitive quality of crocheting or knitting a  large rectangle, it is a relaxing activity. 

It's fully lined with a inner pocket.  The step is done in macrame with cotton cord. I hadn't done any any macrame in twenty some years, but it came right back to me and was enjoyable to do. Below is a picture of the back side of the purse.

                                                    

Crocheted Purse from Leftover Quilt Fabrics

As with many quilters, I end up with mass quantities of leftover fabrics that are too small to fold up and store, but too nice to throw away.  I use them for making greeting cards and for crocheting purses, etc. For the purse I'm making now, I ripped strips from fabrics I've had forever, that don't interest me all that much any more. After crocheting them together, I needed to block the 'new fabric' because it was a bit 'wonky'. So here is my soon to be new purse stretched out on installation styrofoam drying and being stretch to a uniform size.  It's been one of those nice projects to keep handy in a bag and grab when I'm going out to sit and visit in the park with my friends social distancing during the pandemic.

Now I need to find some strong black upholstery trim to make the handle. Have been looking online but to no avail so far. We used to have two fabric/craft stores in San Luis Obispo that would have carried some but both are closed now. Might need to dye up some cotton canvas to use instead.

Fabric Christmas Cards

 Decided to play around with my many fabric scraps and make some Christmas cards. I glued scraps of fabric together on top of wax paper using gel medium and allowed them to dry. Next I cut Christmas tree shapes from the glued fabric strips. I cut sheet music that I bought at a thrift store many years ago for collage purposes and glued the fabric tree to that. Then it was glued to pre-made blank cards that I've had for years.

It was kind of fun to work in a different way and to make cards from materials I had. Sometimes I can't believe all the 'stuff' I have. I know many crafters and quilters like that. I don't want anything for Christmas this year (except for COVID to disappear). We've asked our children to not buy us anything this Christmas and to instead give to the local food bank or another worthy charity.

Ice Dyeing

 A few days ago I had some more fun with ice dyeing. It was a beautiful fall day and I hadn't been out to my lovely studio barn in awhile. The shirt below had been dyed previously and also had some stencil painting done on it, but I was still not crazy about it. The colors came out so intense. I love it now! 

I try to swim three times a week at an outdoor pool to help with my back pain. It's been a little bit chilly lately getting in and especially out of the pool so I bought a white terry cloth robe to keep me warm.  You know me, I couldn't keep all that fabric just plain white! It was a little bit challenging working with this amount of thick, wet fabric. I'm very pleased with the end result. I feel like I'm wearing Joseph's multi-colored coat! It's lovely to wrap up in after getting out of the pool.

Finished Sewing New Quilt top

 

    I Just finished sewing together all the blocks for my challenge quilt. I belong to an art quilting group called Cutting Edge and we decided to make quilts to show our own personal journey with racism.  I wrote about this in my last blog post, with a picture and explanation of  the center block.  Some of the pictures are from my senior yearbook which gives you an idea of how

 few Black girls were 'integrated' into our school. About sixteen into 850 some White girls.

It couldn't have been easy for them, to say the least. For me,  it was the first time 

I had ever met or talked to a Black person. I had seen Black people when we went to downtown Milwaukee to see our dentist or go shopping. But there were no Black people in our neighborhood.

For the 2020/2021 school year, Divine Savior/Holy Angels

 reports that 28% of the students are students of color.

The other pictures show some of the many marches and protests of those times. There's even a picture of  National Guard tanks on the streets of Milwaukee from the summer of 1967.  Although that is considered the 'summer of love' it was also the summer of hate and discrimination in Milwaukee and other cities. There were 199 consecutive days and nights of marches to protest unfair housing practices (Redlining)  and school bussing and segregation. Fr. Groppi was one of the leaders of the protests.

Pictures are courtesy of the Milwaukee Journal, 

Wisconsin Black Historical Society, Milwaukee Public Library

 and the Milwaukee Journal /Sentinel.

As time went on and I lived in other areas of the world and country I had Black coworkers, friends, and boyfriends. I currently live in a county where Blacks make up only 2% and Latinos 23%.

Wauwatosa where I grew up is currently 86% white with 5% black. 

New Quilt Challenge

      It's been a while since I last posted anything. I've been busy working on a new quilt for a challenge from my Cutting Edge group.  The topic being, My Personal Journey with Racism.  This challenge has been very thought provoking, to say the least.

      I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. At the age of five, our family moved to Wauwatosa, a suburb of Milwaukee. You might have noticed that Wisconsin, especially Kenosha and Wauwatosa, have been in the news lately for all the wrong reasons.  There have been a couple of what appears to be racially motivated incidents of police killing young Black men. The September 24th New York Times reported that Milwaukee is among the most racially segregated counties in the United States. 

     After grade school, I attended Divine Savior High School. Sixteen courageous black girls entered Divine Savior-Holy Angels high school in September of 1969. They 'integrated' into the 850 some white girls.There were four Black girls to approximately 220 white girls in each of the four grade levels.They came from Holy Angels High School which was located in the 'inner city' of Milwaukee. The two schools merged that year due to decreasing enrollments at both schools and a decrease in the number of teaching nuns. 

     One day in religion class, Gwen, one of the Black girls was drawing on her hand with white chalk. When Sr. Mary Margaret asked her, "Gwen, what are you doing?" She responded, "I'm just trying to fit in Sister." That really struck me and still does. What was it like for these girls to be so outnumbered by white girls?

I'm still working on assembling some of the other blocks for this quilt, 

but thought I'd post a picture of this one. My husband photographed my hands in the position above, showing one hand drawing on the other with chalk. 

I then used Photoshop to modify the photo. The writing in the background was hand lettered

 and printed to organza, then fused to the  photo.