Category: Jeanne’s Barefoot Heart (Page 8 of 99)

Jeanne’s personal creative pursuits of stories stitched, written, and spoken

Evidence Explained

January 17, 2017 / jeanne / 3 Comments

Evidence 2017, Day 1

Inspired by my friend Judy Martin’s marking of time and dedication to her art, despite a full family life,
Inspired by my friend Jude Hill’s dedication to daily stitching and reflection, interwoven into her daily life,
Inspired by my new friend Kathleen Warren‘s mindful noticing of her surroundings and honoring of her creative process . . .

Evidence 2014

I revamp my abandoned 2014 attempt and a previous attempt at daily stitching that I can’t even find now into a version that will see me through to the champagne. I just know it will.

Evidence 2017, Day 2

Being an accomplishment-oriented girl, I like to track how I spend my life.

Evidence 2017, Day 3

I first ask myself: how do I want to fill my days, and the answer hasn’t changed significantly in the past 4 years:
stitching,
moving (as in moving my body through space – walking, yoga, exercise, etc),
writing,
mirthing (think: awe, wonder, laughing).
This year I add 2 things:
prospering (in every way a girl can prosper) and
connecting (as in with people, friends, family, strangers)

Evidence 2017, Day 4

Then I assign each a color. (There is a story behind each hue. I’ll tell you later.)
stitching
moving
writing
mirthing
prospering
connecting

Once that is decided, I make my way to the local thrift shop and purchase clothes in those colors to use as fabrics. Storied cloth, my favorite.

Evidence 2017, Day 5

I track everything in my handwritten journal, and each morning I look back at the day before, free-cut strips of fabric in the appropriate colors, then I turn my Improv Self loose to stitch them together into a 6.5″ square block.

Evidence 2017, Day 6

The method of stitching the daily blocks will change each month. For January 2017, I’m using wedges – something I’ve long wanted to try my hand at, but never made the time to try. (Wait’ll you see what the daily blocks will look like next month.)

Evidence 2017, Day 7

You might ask (I know I did) Why is there not a color representing The 70273 Project? The answer: Because The 70273 Project touches every part of my life, and every verb I want to have in my every day touches The 70273 Project. Writing? Multiple writing projects each day are for The 70273 Project. (Know anybody who wants a guest blog post?) Stitching? I stitch several blocks each day for The 70273 Project. Moving? I move so I can keep up with The 70273 Project! Connecting? Oh good lord, such marvelous connections are made daily because of The 70273 Project. You get the picture. Right or wrong, there is no separation between The 70273 Project and me . . . something we’ll talk more about later.

Evidence 2017, Week 1

Each week will be stitched together, then each month, and finally . . . the year.

One thing that eludes me right now is how to finish the back. Ideas?

A Handmade Christmas

January 14, 2017 / jeanne / 4 Comments

Seems like it was 3 years ago, yet the calendar say it was a mere 3 weeks ago when the family gathered together for a week of hilarity, memory making, and opening. Last year I stole minutes here and there from The 70273 Project to make some gifts for giving.

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care . . .

When Mom was a baby, her mother took her to visit one of her grandmothers. Mother reached down and grabbed a tiny fistful of the lace collar on her grandmother’s blouse. “This baby is gonna’ like pretty things,” the grandmother correctly predicted, so Mother’s stocking was made with flowers to reflect her flourishing green thumb and topped with lace.

My daughter-in-law, Marnie, is an art historian who enjoys art that’s so old it makes my head hurt. Before our trip to see The Bayeux Tapestry several years ago, Marnie gave me enough background information that I should’ve gotten college credit hours. Her stocking was topped with embroidered trim depicting a section of The Bayeux Tapestry.

When my daughter was born, I took her stocking to the hospital with me and added the last element – her name – after she was born and before we brought her home.

Fourteen months later, I did the same thing with my son’s stocking, taking it to the hospital to add his name once we knew whether we were the proud parents of a girl or a boy.

The Engineer’s grandmother, we called her Maw – made a quilt of old suits once worn by The Engineer’s grandfather, Pops. Though I could’ve repaired the quilt, I chose to make The Engineer a stocking from it.

Calder Ray celebrated his first Christmas in 2016. I used colors from Alexander Calder’s artist palette to make the fabric for my grandson’s stocking, cuffing it with some wool fabric from Ireland, and Calder Ray did just what you’d expect a seven month old to do: he chewed on it.

Remember I told you how Marnie likes ancient art and how knowledgeable and enamored she is with The Bayeux Tapestry? Well, this year I put the quilting frame down and picked up the wool to do a needlepoint canvas of one of the scenes from The Bayeux Tapestry. After finishing it, I could not decide what to do with it. Should I frame it? They don’t really have that many available walls, so maybe not. Make a pillow? That would mean cording, and I am not good at cording, so no. When I spied the adorable little stool with the hinged lid in the antique store, I knew what to do, so now Marnie has a footstool, covered with a needlepoint scene from The Bayeux Tapestry and a wee little bit of storage space to boot. (I just hope their new, rambunctious Border Collie, Harper, who has a hankering for gnawing on wooden furniture, never discovers the wood underneath the needlepoint.)

With visions of not sugarplums, but with dreams of a ritual of the quilt being pulled out every December 1 and slept under till the New Year, I made Calder Ray his Christmas quilt, not to hang on the wall, but to use. I’ll show you better, fuller photos later when I’m finished quilting it (Yes, I gifted it to him partly quilted and partly basted) so you can see that branches and needles of the red tree (I’ll explain the red later, too) are in the shape of my hands, and the trunk is in the shape of Calder Ray’s feet.

The body of the angel that perches at the top of the red tree is made of drawings of Calder Ray’s feet, and her wings are made from drawings of Calder Ray’s pudgy, recently-discovered 7-month old hands. Her raiments are from a napkin The Engineer found for me in a local thrift shop.

You know, 4.5 decades ago, I made everybody’s Christmas gifts as a matter of economy – as newlyweds, we didn’t have money to spend buying a lot of presents – and I remember getting a note from my sister-in-law saying that she felt like the lucky one because while The Engineer bought his brother a nice gift, hers was handmade. Her words didn’t really mean all that much then, but now, when I snuggle under the quilt my grandmother made, when I look at the crewel work my mother stitched, when we hang those handmade ornaments on the tree, I understand and offer up a wee little wish that Calder Ray and his parents put these things in their cherish column one day, too.

~~~~~~~

Looking for The 70273 Project? It’ll be back tomorrow, and in the meantime, try these haunts:
Subscribe to the blog (where all information is shared).
Join the English-speaking Facebook group – our e-campfire – where you can talk to other members of The 70273 Project Tribe.
Join the French-speaking Facebook group – our other e-campfire – where you can chat with other members of The 70273 Project Tribe.
Like the Facebook page where you can check in for frequent updates.
Get folks to help celebrate your birthday by making blocks and/or donating bucks.
Follow the pinterest board for visual information.
Post using #the70273project on Instagram. (Please tag me, too, @whollyjeanne, so I don’t miss anything.)
Tell your friends what you want for your birthday.
Shop with Amazon Smile and support The 70273 Project.
And if you haven’t yet made some blocks, perhaps you’d like to put some cloth in your hands and join us.
Or maybe you’d like to gather friends and family, colleagues or students, club or guild members, etc. together and make a group quilt.

Monthly Mixer January 2017

December 31, 2016 / jeanne / 1 Comment

The 70273 Project Monthly Mixer for January 2017

You’ve seen those challenges for instagram and blog posts, right, where there’s a prompt for every day of the month and you snap and post a photo or pen a post accordingly? Well, thanks to my 3 a.m. self, we now have one to call our own, and I’m calling it our Monthly Mixer, and here it is. Nobody’s taking roll, so play along as and if you will.

Feel free to share throughout social media land and post on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and your blogs using #The70273ProjectMonthlyMixer and #The70273Project. It’d be muchly appreciated if you’d tag me, too, so I don’t miss it. I’m @whollyjeanne on twitter and instagram, and Jeanne Hewell-Chambers on facebook. It’s a fun way to acquaint others with The 70273 Project, and to get acquainted with other folks ourselves. (Me, I can’t wait till 1/20 cause I’ve got a thing for pincushions.)

It’s the first time I’ve created something like this, so here’s the text in case the graphic is unreadable:

JANUARY 2017
1: Something imperfect
2: Something edible that’s red and white
3: Something small, white, and round
4: Something rectangular
5: The block you’re working on
6: Where you’re stitching today
7: A finished block
8: Something that makes you smile
9: A naturally occurring X
10: The tiniest x’s you can make
11: Your sewing kit and what’s inside it
12: A word to describe what you feel as you stitch blocks
13: Somewhere you’d like to sit and stitch blocks
14: Something you find in a s’more
15: The arm to the chair you sit in to stitch
16: Your favorite beverage
17: Photograph a block outside
18: Two fat X’s
19: Your ironing board
20: Your pincushion
21: The sky
22: A white button
23: A finished block
24: A surprise – something you didn’t expect to see
25: Favorite sewing notion, tool
26: Your hands
27: Your scissors
28: Something in the shape of a teardrop
29: What’s to your right
30: Your favorite mug
31: Two x’s made of something besides fabric

Playing in the Meadow on the Other Side of the Rainbow Bridge

December 1, 2016 / jeanne / 1 Comment

My boy, Kipp, rescued him from a Denver humane society.
It was between the border collie and a Corgi – he couldn’t decide.
Ultimately, Kipp chose well.

Otto was a ~~slightly~~ neurotic dog
afraid of the most, um, unusual things.

He was a mischievous dog,
though you usually only knew
he’d been mischievous
when he had this certain look about him.
Oh, he knew you were smart enough to figure it out eventually,
but he was always hopeful that once – just once –
he’d be wrong about you.

If you couldn’t find Otto,
you could bet your bottom dollar
that something resembling food
(cooked, raw, packaged, unpackaged – no matter)
had been left within, oh, 4′ from the edge of the kitchen counter.

Otto was a dog secure enough in his own manhood
to be prissy on occasion . . .
without apology.

We’re still not quite sure which one
Marnie fell in love with first:
Kipp or Otto,
but no matter.
They were a package deal
and she won both their hearts.

And though they were as nervous
as any first-time parents in the history of the galaxy ever were,
Otto proved to be a good Big Brother
to Calder Ray,
watching over him when others
well
went to sleep on the job.

Though they’ll surely adopt another furry baby
sometime down the road
when their hearts have had time to heal,
one thing is for sure:
the next Chambers canine will have awfully big paws to fill.

R.I.P. Otto.
You were the best Son Dog,
the best Big Brother Dog,
the best Granddog,
the best Great Granddog,
the best Nephew Dog,
the Best Friend
ever.

Living Gratitude

November 24, 2016 / jeanne / 0 Comments

To all who brighten days with laughter, kindness, and thoughtfulness,

To all who spill goodness into the world at every turn and opportunity,

To all who keep a respectful, open heart to those with differences large and small,

To all who shine light into the darkness,

To all who dare to think for yourselves and allow others to do the same,

To all who help commemorate the 70273 precious souls,

Thank you and Happy Thanksgiving from The Engineer, Nancy, and me.

A Stitch from the Past

October 25, 2016 / jeanne / 2 Comments

gdb5

About 15 years ago, I had this idea: I cut circles from fabric and stitched biographical plates (portraits) of my ancestors. Small projects, easy to tuck into my bag and work on wherever I happened to be. And what did I do after stitching them?

Nothing.

I’d planned to stitch them onto a tablecloth . . . but that never happened. I just tucked them into the scrap suitcase were they lingered (forgotten) until I went to grab bits I might use on The Storyteller’s Apron, #1: Sky Rider. Now the plates will become constellations – or maybe galaxies – as I stitch along with Jude Hill and the #sunmoonstars gang.

gdb4

This is the plate of my maternal granddaddy who was a sheriff in Fayette County, GA who liked to play checkers with his grandchildren and took it upon himself to teach each of us to drink coffee. He’d pull us into his lap, fill a saucer with milk, then add a splash of steaming hot Luzianne coffee – just enough to turn the milk a tan color. We’d blow on it and blow on it and blow on it, sending the steam across the room, sipping from the saucer only when there was no more steam to blow. Me? I took part in the ritual up till the part of sipping the milked-down coffee. That was as far as I could go, and to this day, I’ve never even tried coffee.

Starting is Such Sweat ‘n Sorrow

October 20, 2016 / jeanne / 4 Comments

I think.

I gather.

I plan.

I align.

I start. Finally.

Why so much circling before starting to stitch along with Jude Hill’s SunMoonStars? I think it has to do with trust. After all these trips around the sun, my brain still don’t trust that my heart and hands or even itself, for that matter, will come up with a story, develop it, tell it. My brain – the same brain with authority issues which means it’s the same brain that doesn’t like to follow directions or use patterns – doesn’t believe in haptic intelligence or creativity.

I bought these 2 curtain panels at a thrift shop, and I spent hours trying to decide how to use them. Do I make one long storytelling cloth? Do I make one panel the back of the quilt? Do I make a long, skinny “book”? I finally decide to match the circles – because we all know that everything goes much more smoothly when the planets, suns, and moons are in alignment.

I long to be the woman who can travel the world with a backpack, has more space in her house than stuff, and just starts. I’m not there yet, but I’m working on it. And this cloth, this series? It’s gonna’ be FUN.

Going to The Dog

October 13, 2016 / jeanne / 2 Comments

Meet Phoebe, our Corgi, a Christmas gift from our children in 2002. Today is her birthday, and so you don’t have to do the math, I’ll tell you: she is 14 people years old today.

Her preferred mode of transportation is a golf cart. Until about 6 months ago when her hearing began to decline, you could say “golf cart” and out she’d scoot. Now it’s the loud, shrill beep-beep-beep of reverse that gets her attention.

Her wants are few, and her needs are simple: breakfast and supper with sprinkled treats in between and at bedtime. She likes a squeaker toy (which the good ones do for about 5 minutes before she’s demolished the voice box) and a walk every day around 4. Phoebe doesn’t demand more than her fair share of our paycheck and what we get in return is priceless.

Phoebe gets along with everybody going into fierce protection mode only if somebody messes with her people with the intent to do them harm.

phoebesleeping

Not one to dictate how you should live in your own backyard, Phoebe doesn’t really care how big you dig holes or how many bones you bury there. She doesn’t care if you walk around the house in your underwear or put furniture and appliances on your front porch. She only asks that you don’t try to make her do things your way or tell her what she can and cannot do in her yard. Tend to your own backyard and afford Phoebe the same consideration, and you’ll get along swell.

It’s a given: some folks like dogs more than they like cats while some folks like cats more than they like dogs. Phoebe is respectful of the fact that everybody’s different with different preferences and perspectives which is why you’ll never read a post on her Facebook timeline ordering people to unfriend you if they think differently from you. Phoebe values individuality and personal relationships far more than that.

You know, without cluttering the environment with a single yard sign, without enduring a single robocall, without losing an entire forest to unsolicited junk mail, I think I’ve just convinced myself to vote for Phoebe as a write-in candidate this November.

P.S. That last photo? It’s her head shot from a local performance of “Annie.” She played the role not of Daddy Warlocks but of Sandy. We’re not afraid to do things a little differently in this neck of the woods.

Sky Rider

October 3, 2016 / jeanne / 0 Comments

I rescued these years ago.
Ten blocks.
A quarter each,
and she gave me a discount because I used the word “rescue”.

Some see tatters.

Hard times.
Worn slap out.

I see stories of resourcefulness and making do.
A special kind of creativity, if you ask me.

Stories of homemade dresses.
and flower gardens lovingly tended.

Stories of birthday cakes
and piano lessons
and biscuits with butter and syrup.

I’ve said Yes to Jude Hill’s latest stitch-a-long, and I’m thinking about doing something I’ve never done before: turning these blocks into a book for Calder Ray . . . mostly because if I make a book, the fetching back side fabric becomes a page and doesn’t remain hidden. The story is already forming . . . a boy who walks on suns and moons, who eats stars for breakfast, lassoes them in play and lets them give him a bath, even if it’s not Saturday night.

These are things my brain is thinking, you understand, plans my brain is making so it can be comfortable knowing how everything is supposed to go before I even thread the needle. Isn’t it funny that in all the trips I’ve made around the sun on this beautiful rock, my brain is always surprised to find that its best laid plans are subject to change once my hands pick up and get going . . .

Calder Ray’s Standing Invitation

August 19, 2016 / jeanne / 6 Comments

The clock ticks loudly. Time to make that quilt for my soon-to-be born grandchild. I have no idea what I want it to look like – something that doesn’t alarm me cause I usually start with only the vaguest notion of what I want to do. Even on the rare occasion when I do have a detailed, clear idea, it seldom turns out the way I envisioned, creativity being what it is and all. Not knowing the gender or room color, I gather my supplies, selecting colors that tickles my eyes and cloth that satisfies my touch. I trust my Bones.

Ideas and images come to call as I go along. I cut scraps into ovals and send them out to my elves, asking them to get signatures for me. And when the pieces come back, I decide I have to – I just have to – stitch over the autographs to make them more visible, more lasting.

I stitch wherever I am – in the car, on the sofa, in the studio. Sometimes I stitch in the darkness of a hospital room.

and at my niece’s house. (Which reminds me: I need to order them some more bubble juice.)

My 2 year old great nephew is gracious enough to model a monkey for me, something to fill that unexpected bare spot. Once it is stitched, he seems a little under-enthusiastic about my monkey (which indicates his bend towards the more literal-brained side of the family). (Which is all of them except Nancy.) (Though a couple of them seem to be melting a little bit as they go along.)

FlockOfBirds

I stitch the bird and the nest and the flock of birds while at my son’s house. Because all I could hear on the inside was a short tape of things my father-in-law said when I showed him the sketches I made on my first day of drawing class, I decide to cut freehand instead of drawing on the fabric and cutting on the lines. I feel like a proud kindergartner when I show my son the impromptu birds and nest. I’m not sure he noticed the heart-shaped eggs. They were a last-minute addition. Of course.

(Note: See that autograph just to the right of the top bird on the left in the picture above? That’s Nancy’s signature. And the one to the right of it? That’s my 2-year old great-nephew’s siggie.)

I stitch the trunk (which was originally hanging down below the quilt) and the branches while at my daughter’s house. Oh those branches. What a fit they give all of us – Alison, The Engineer, and me. I lay down fabric for each branch to indicate the different branches of the family tree. But it is too chaotic – too much visual clutter. The three of us grow quite cranky. Nobody knows what to do. Finally, in a Hail Mary foot stomp kind of move, I find enough of the same fabric, fold it over and over again, lay it down on the already-attached branches, and voila! My eyes calm and purr. Each branch now sports a different base and the same top cover. The same, but different. Together, but separate. I like that. And the trunk? It is far too distracting hanging down, so I snip it off and hem it up.

At The Very Last Minute, I add an impromptu gathering of our cats and dogs, sitting in a surprise flower bed. Then I add the invitation . . . When becoming gets too hard, go to the Forest. Maybe this is one time I should’ve printed my words on paper and stitched through the paper cause then I might’ve had room to say “family” forest. Hopefully everybody – and most especially You Know Who – gets the idea.

Finally this happens

and this (oh those Chambers men)

and 3 months later, when they come for a visit here atop the mountain,
this happens while Calder Ray lays on a pallet of 3 quilts made by my grandmother,
his great great grandmother. First we sing our first duet . . .

. . . then one sings and the other dances.
In this neck of the woods, we call that a Hootenanny.
(And um, about that singing. It’s fairly obvious to everybody
that Alison does not get her talent from me.)

SignedSealedDelivered

And now the quilt – Calder Ray’s Standing Invitation – hangs in his room.
Signed. Sealed. Delivered.
(Note the wall color – ha!)
Everybody calls him Calder, but I’m Southern,
and we like double names, so I call him Calder Ray.

And on top of the shelves under the quilt is this blue elephant. I bought it before he was born cause I knew – I just knew – he was gonna’ be a boy. Because so many different colors of dirt and rocks lie between Calder Ray and me, I keep Mr. Blue Elephant filled to the brim with handwritten bedtime notes from me. When he’s old enough to appreciate it, his parents are supposed to pull one out every night when he’s tucked into bed and read it to him. Eventually he’ll be able to read them himself, of course, and I already know things I want to write him when he’s off at college or heading down The aisle. You know I do.

I also have an inkling of another quilt I want to make him. Well, 12 or 15 quilts, actually. One to wrap up in when he is sick. One to wrap up in when he needs fortification. One to lay on for nap time. A quilt to sleep under on Christmas Eve, another for Valentine’s Day (also my birthday, so that one will have to be special), his birthday quilt, a New Year’s quilt, a First Day of School quilt, and a big, anytime/anywhere quilt that will remind him of the special sauce I’ve already begun whispering to him every chance I get:

You are kind.
You are funny.
You are smart.
You are creative.

This quilt I can already see.