a creative treasure trove and a reminder to live life to the fullest

one of the members of our local creative group posted on our facebook page that she was giving away her batik supplies, including a number of cantings (tjantings), which i've long been looking for (they're the little "pens" with a vessel to hold the hot wax). i wrote to her and said i'd love to have them. lucky for me, i was first. she lives only about 10 minutes away, so i arranged to stop by this afternoon to pick them up. i took a bottle of wine, since she didn't want to sell the supplies.

i had met her a few years ago at one of our exhibitions, but she's not a super active member, so i didn't know her well. stepping into her home, i loved how creative it felt...the entry hallway was covered in a collage of wallpaper samples. it's always wonderful to step into a creative home. next up, was a wall of book shelves and two comfy chairs. so inviting and wonderful. she had the things all out on the table and invited me to sit down. 

like the treasure trove another friend gave me last year, she had her extensive notes from her art education, with all the exact formulas of all the colors. she had highlighted some of the most key instructions for me. and it seemed important to her that i could read and understand them. i felt, like i did last spring, so privileged to be given this treasure. i also fear that there is no longer such an education, where you really learn everything there is to learn about dyeing fabric. 

she also gave me her color samples, on which she had carefully noted her exact formulas for achieving the colors, sometimes with multiple color baths. when i look at them, what i see is a quilt. a beautiful, rich, colorful quilt. 

she looked different than when i last saw her. her hair was very short, but i hadn't realized that it was because she had been through chemotherapy. and that that was why she was giving away her batik supplies. she has an aggressive breast cancer and at her last appointment, her doctor told her to think about how she wanted to use what time she had left. what that must feel like. it takes my breath away.

it was sobering to talk to her and her husband about what it's like to have a terminal cancer diagnosis in the time of corona. and even though we only scratched the surface, all of us with tears in our eyes, it was very moving and intense and i felt privileged to be part of the moment, even as i can't even imagine how it must feel.

i can't imagine what it's like, but there, in the moment i could, for just a second, even though it isn't my story. and then i understood the feeling i got that it was so important to her to share her notes on the colors. 

we all want to leave something behind. we want to have mattered. we want to create something lasting. and i want to create something lasting from the fabric she dyed and from her supplies. so i'm going to learn how to use them, even though they require learning about caustic soda. i have her carefully-written instructions and i can ask her for help, as she only lives about 10 minutes away. 

we have to live our lives while they're here, seize the moments while we can, and not waste a single one and leave behind all the beauty we can.

i am so grateful to have her samples and her supplies and i will think of her every single moment as i use them to make something beautiful. it's the very least i can do.

documentation of a creative education

i visited a friend this afternoon. she's a lovely woman in her 70s who taught textiles and all sorts of handiwork at a danish højskole for many years. she's the one who finds all kinds of looms and spinning wheels and such for me because she works at the local red cross secondhand store. she also has friends who have such things and they have reached an age where they want to get rid of them. 

we hadn't seen one another in a very long time thanks to corona, but we decided to have coffee and the season's first rhubarb cake today. it's the big prayer day and so i had a much-needed day off. i love her home - it's so inviting and everywhere, there's something quirky, interesting and most likely handmade. even the old dried up oranges in a little wood bowl next to some dried out mushrooms in the kitchen windowsill are beautiful. it's how i want my home to be. something interesting at every turn. 

she mentioned the other day that she had all of her old projects from when she went to textile design school back in the late 60s. and she wondered if maybe we in creagive, our local creative group, would want to use it to do collage or something. so she took me upstairs and she got out all these big folios from where they were stored. we sat down on the floor, opened them all up and went through them together. 

as we flipped through pages and pages of different pattern designs and fabric prints and sketches of things to weave, she told me stories. of teachers, of materials, of travels, of sources of inspiration, of the way that colors or patterns had fascinated her. i am kicking myself for not recording her stories. 

she insisted that i take all this treasure home with me - 5 big folios and several notebooks. i feel so inspired by it and i will take some of it along on our creagive trip to højer in the autumn. emmy might even come along as well and she can tell us stories. 

but i intend to go through it all carefully and photograph some of it and perhaps even work with some of it. there's a whole binder of different printed fabric samples that would make an amazing quilt. and there are some beautiful machine-stitched patterns that deserve to be framed (it's those in the photos on this post). 

husband looked through some of it with me after dinner and he was just as in awe of it as i am. she worked so thoroughly with various patterns, exploring colors and all the options. i wonder if any education today does this so thoroughly as they did back then. 

she started her education at what would later become kolding design school in 1967, the year that i was born. and all of the things she worked with seem so timeless and fresh, even today. i can't believe she didn't go on to work for merimekko or some other scandinavian design firm. even just the samples are just beautiful. 

i kept asking her if she was sure she wanted to be rid of it and sure that her family wouldn't want it. she assured me they wouldn't and that she was ready to let it go. i feel so privileged that she wanted me to have this. i feel entrusted with something special and amazing. it's the tracing of a person's creative development and a huge insight into a creative mind, as well as a glimpse of an education and a time that is surely gone. i can't imagine anyone going to such depths today. it feels like everyone wants to take shortcuts and rush as quickly to something commercial as can be.

and it was also clear in some of the assignments (because she kept those too), that they were being asked to think in a commercial way as well. one assignment was to create a fabric pattern that would work equally well for women or men. 

my friend wants our creative group to use all of this as materials for collage and some of it can definitely be that, but i think quite a lot of is far too good for that. i already feel inspired by the way she worked with patterns and techniques. for example, these sewing machine embroidered pieces can be found in sketch form and then a more complete drawing that was framed by passe partout and then in its final form, stitched with the sewing machine on fabric, also in a passe partout frame. 

so much of the work is signed and dated and we will definitely be framing some of the pieces. husband thinks we should go through it all, decide what we'd like to keep and then pay her for it. i fear she will refuse, but i think we should insist. i may have to invite her over tomorrow or sunday to go through it all again and to tell me more stories about it, which this time, i will record. it would be so cool to do some work inspired by her work and then create an exhibition - a kind of dialogue across 50 years. 

wordless wednesday: second-hand shop finds

great grandma's quilts

i shared a few of the quilts i brought home from the states last summer, but i realized i hadn't shared them all. since i'm quilting away myself these days, i thought i'd share some more of the beautiful work done by my grandmother and great-grandmother. gorgeous, handmade, hand sewn quilts and quilt tops. once the house is in a better state, i hope to get a big quilt frame and hand quilt at least one of them myself, but until then, i just enjoy the photos of them and keep them tucked away, safe from moisture and mice.  at least i hope they're safe from mice, i fear i heard a telltale scratching in the wall the other day, but such is life on the farm.

mom's cat - millie - on a crazy quilt mom acquired at an auction.
it's not deemed a family heirloom (from our family at least), hence the status as cat bed.
currently, my cat is sleeping on it at my feet under my desk.

i think the blocks were done my great grandmother on this one.
but i suspect the green and white edging and quilting were done later.

hand quilted and beautiful!

an enormous amount of crochet - my grandmother made this one.
i remember her working on it and how beautiful her bedroom looked.

this one's quite worn and faded - but beautiful that it must have been used!

i remember using this one in my childhood. it could use a new binding.
tho' with my relationship to binding, i'm unlikely to replace it.

the most spectacular quilt top - a spider quilt - completely hand-sewn.
believe it or not, i let my sister have this one.
she can have it hand quilted in kalona by the amish ladies.

detail of the spiderweb quilt.

bright and cheery quilt top.
i believe it's a combination of old and new fabrics.
it's these mom remembers her grandmother making while she was bedridden.

another of the quilt tops - this one's in great shape, no holes anywhere.

detail of the hand sewing! so precise and beautiful

one last quilt top - also in beautiful condition.

i guess these quilts indicate that i come by my love of bright fabric and quilting honestly. i'm just the latest in a long line of quilters. i have mused a little bit about this previously, when my mom sent me one of the tops.

family heirlooms

when i was home over the summer, i rummaged around in my parents' basement and found a treasure trove. a whole stack of finished quilts and half a dozen quilt tops which were sewn by hand by my great grandmother back in the 40s. mom says she remembers her grandma annie, who was ill and in bed at the time, sitting with stacks of squares, hexagons and also those beautiful yoyos (which i showed previously), just sewing away all day. now that's something i could get into - hanging out in bed (read: wearing pajamas)and sewing all day.

double wedding ring in purple - this one is my favorite (other than the yoyo)

i think what surprises me most is how vibrant, fresh and modern these are for being 70-80 years old. the fabrics my great grandmother chose would be something i would choose myself today. i believe it's a mix of flour sacks, old clothing and new fabrics (new in her time, of course). i think it proves that quilting is somehow timeless.

i remember using this one as a child and there are some frayed bits here and there that show its been loved.
it's also a bit more faded than the others.

i can see that there is a big difference between these, which are all hand-stitched and hand-quilted and the quilts i've made by machine today. i'm not sure that what i've done are heirlooms in the same sense as these are. i think my impatience enters into the picture and i want to quickly see a result. i need to learn from these to take my time. it certainly appears that it's worth it in the end.

hexagons - this one unfortunately has been up against a rusty grate and has some rust stains on it.
it's also been used and the edges are quite frayed. my grandmother must have used it.

i don't think i'll be going to quite the same level of detail on the bindings i tackle as the one on this hexagon quilt. and the binding is actually a bit frayed and needs replacing. but for me, binding is always the biggest challenge. i have a number of quilts which are "finished" except for the binding, which i guess means they're not finished at all.

what i'd love to know is whether my great grandmother did the quilting herself or if she had a group of ladies who got together and did the quilting. and how on earth, once she was bed-ridden, did she lay out these beautiful patterns? was it all just in her head and she pulled one square from one stack and one from another and sewed it as she went along - that's what my mother remembers. mom also remembers that her aunt had some of them quilted by a local quilting group, so it may be that my grandmother didn't do the finished quilting on all of these herself. they're large - at least queen-sized, all of them, so i think quilting would have been difficult without a frame of some sort.

in any case, i'm really happy to have them in my home and it makes me so happy to be using them. i'm pondering how to tackle the three finished tops i brought back as well - i simply must quilt them by hand to do honor to my great grandmother's work. but that seems a bit of a daunting job. maybe i can find a way to marry 20th and 21st centuries, but i'm still pondering that.

the simple things: for christina

today is the lovely christina's birthday. you know her, the fabulous cook and photographer with the beautiful soul over at soul aperture? well, in honor of her birthday, we're once again sharing the simple things. happy birthday, beautiful christina, may your day be filled with all of the simple things you love.

and in the spirit of spreading love and good karma in your honor, here are the simple things i'm loving right now...

a girl and her horse

heart-shaped stone on the beach.

calico cat on a crazy quilt

gorgeous yo-yo quilt made by my great-grandmother and found by me on a basement treasure hunt

magical light

painting light on the night sky

happy birthday to you, christina. you are a true generator of love in the blogosphere. and a big thank you to my dear se'lah, for letting me know, otherwise, i might totally have missed this.

simple things, simple gestures, simply beautiful.

weaving the past or a treasure trove of historical threads

husband bought me a loom yesterday. i don't have it home yet and it was just a pile of what appeared to be sticks and other mysterious bits lying on the floor in a basement, so it wasn't really worth photographing yet anyway. it's a 130cm wide lervad loom, an old one, but it's been well-used and well-loved and many a beautiful thing has been created on it. we bought it from a lovely lady who is nearly 80 and who was a member of my weaving group for years. she said she's painting now and doesn't have time or inclination to weave anymore (isn't that a marvelous reason?), so that's why she was selling it. lucky me! along with it, she had a box of binders and a basket of weaving yarn. we had room for that box in the car, so we took that much with us. we'll go back with a trailer when the weather gets better and pick up the loom itself. at first, the binders looked a bit uninteresting, but then last evening, we took a closer look. and we discovered treasure beyond belief.

the binders contain countless weaving patterns and weaving exercises and samples of things she wove over the years. many of the pages are from courses where it was clear that patterns were distributed as hand-written mimeograph copies - so they have that characteristic purple ink and that old familiar smell that takes me back to the 3rd grade (in a good way), but they're in some sweet lady's handwriting. it is simply a priceless historical record of the countless things woven by the lovely lady who owned my loom. taking advantage of a bit of sunshine today, i photographed the contents of one of the binders:

she had carefully noted patterns and yarn samples and accompanying many of the pages are woven samples of the patterns in various different materials. sabin wanted to appropriate some as furnishings for her littlest pet shop, but we discussed how important these are as historical artifacts and now she knows her LPS are not going to have fine carpets anytime soon. there are about 10 binders in all, an absolute treasure trove of 30 years of weaving in denmark. i find it unbelievable that this treasure came with my loom. i'm going to see if i can have them bound into proper books by a bookbinder. and they will have a place of honor in the new blue room, wherever it may be. it just seems like such an invaluable resource.

here are some samples from just one of the notebooks...

i think this may be the very best combined anniversary-valentine's day-upcoming birthday present ever. thank you husband and thank you lovely lady who let me buy your loom.

i'm in love

despite the fact that he cut off our internet cable at its source, with a wire clippers, two weeks ago, which momentarily left us calling him the husband formerly known as a keeper, husband is securely back at keeper status. because today, when he finally took that trash that we've been hauling around in the trunk of our car for two weeks to the dump, he came back with this beauty, which someone callously left sitting right there beside the "metal trash" container (our dump is VERY organized - one day i will go there with a camera and show you...we take recycling very seriously here)...anyway, here's the beauty he rescued:

i love this, i don't know whether it's the shop that sold it, or the person who owned it. i've got to do some research into that. i'm glad it's threaded, so i can see how that's done. i'm going to see if it still works. and i'll betcha anything it does.

we talked over dinner about such beautiful, classic pieces of machinery. beautiful and ingenius in their simultaneous simplicity and complexity. imagine how much easier they made things when they were invented. husband thinks that the sewing machine and the bicycle are two examples of perfect simple genius. and when i see this beautiful old classic sewing machine, i'm inclined to agree.

p.s. i apologize for the crap pictures, it was a really cloudy, grey, dark day today and i refuse to use flash...or drag out my tripod.

what i would save if there was a fire

about five years ago, i nearly burned the house down when some candles that i thought were very far away from the curtains turned out not to be. thanks to a little bitty sabin, who said, "mama, den is burnin'" and the fact that i'd just given her a bath and had a plastic bathtub full of water at hand, i put the fire out before it had done too much damage. and we got a new floor upstairs out the deal from the insurance company, so, as ma ingalls would say, "all's well that ends well." i try not to think about the fact that it was about 10 more seconds from being too on fire for me to put out, so we won't really go there.

but ever since, i have thought about what i would try to save if there was a fire. and what comes to mind every time is our red smeg refrigerator. if it weren't full of various incubating life forms, i would also throw a whole bunch of other stuff inside of it before dragging it out of the house with my superhuman strength.

see this picture over on across ø/öresund as well. it's red week!

i love that refrigerator so much so that when i threw out the idea to husband over dinner that in light of global warming and rising sea levels, we consider living on a boat instead of getting a farm property, he said, what is the one thing you'd want from the house, since you'd only be able to have one thing on the boat and i immediately, without hesitation, said the smeg. (dang that was a long sentence.) it's beautiful. bright. shiny (mmm, shiny). it's red. its rounded, retro curves are just totally lovely (note mini-lesson in it's/its usage). if we move, it's coming with us. and yes, i stuck those frogs on it with that blue tack substance (so as not to harm the shiny surface). aside: at our house, we refer to blue tack as consultant snot, by the way.


anyway, back to what i would throw inside it before dragging it outside...

: : the requisite boxes of pictures from my time in the balkans and the early days of our relationship
: : my macbook pro
: : my iMac or at the very least the Time Capsule (so I'd have the 34,000 pictures i've taken in the past year)
: : the nikons
: : rolleicord and rolleiflex
: : a little box of treasures from when sabin was a baby - she was born 10 weeks early and i saved some of the tiniest clothes she had (they were really tiny, she weighed 1500 grams)
: : that picture of husband building his first structure
: : my blankie

have you thought about what you would save if there was a fire?