December Morning Make 2022

A bit too on the nose?

In December I dug into my daughters’ craft supplies, augmented by yarn scraps from a dear friend who knits, and experimented with punch needle. Each day I used one little ball of yarn to randomly fill a space. It’s easy to do and doesn’t take long at all. Indeed, some morning’s I was at it for only 5-10 minutes. In the crazy days of the winter holiday season it was just about perfect.

We had a ball of that ultra soft acrylic yarn in white. A fake chenille? It was the right choice for the directions.

I’ve been thinking about touch a lot this winter. Realizing, mostly, how important it is to me. Not that I am a huge smuggler or hugger, but I do love a good hand hold. I was reading about how you can get your own body to release dopamine and serotonin and reduce cortisol (the stress hormone) through non-sexual touch. I found myself gently petting or rubbing my own hands in a calming gesture. My husband thought I was weird, if I’m being honest, but I found it very helpful.

Thinking about touch and seeing the benefit of these simple hand movements for myself also made me realize that this is part of why I like hand work. Using your hands isn’t just useful for the task at hand. It activates something else, something associated with the sense of touch outside of the brain’s task. When I am getting stressed or ansty I tend to feel an energy in my hands that is distracting and uncomfortable. I am often looking for an outlet to ‘get it out’. The more hand work I do, the more active my hands are in a positive way, the less I feel that bad energy.

Punch needle itself is practically fool proof with the right tools. Obviously some yarns and tools are easier to work with. It really does help, as well, to use the right base cloth. If I were to do this again I would upgrade our punch, the cheap plastic one we had was nice for being adjustable, but not very comfortable in the hand.

One of the things I quite liked is that the back is/can be as neat as the front. Depending on whether you used the punch from the front or the back it changes what you see, but both work. Varying the thickness and type of yarn as well as the depth of the punch meant I have a lot of textural and visual variation in the piece. Being open to the scrappy nature of this comes naturally for me as a quilter. If I hadn’t used words I could have chosen which side to display.

In the end, I mounted the piece on an old dollar store canvas with a staple gun. We don’t need another pillow in this house and I liked the visual of a mounted piece.

May Morning Make 2022

While May was a busy month for a family it was a relaxing month for Morning Make. Indeed, starting my day with Morning Make meant that I was in a good frame of mind for the rest of a chaos.

These watercolour sketches of quilts are not a new to me effort. I’ve made a few in the past. For me, it’s a great, relaxing activity. Plus, I get to explore traditional quilts without having to sew them. All that precision piecing!

While there are a million resources for quilt blocks in both print and online I turned to this beauty of a book for picking out my patterns: The Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns by Barbara Brackman. It’s an absolute classic and was recently reprinted. It pairs, if you like, with the Electric Quilt products, but you can buy the stand alone book. I picked mine up through Quilt Folk, but check your local quilt stores (or ask them to order it for you) or through the big A. Note, the book only contains drawings of the patterns, there are no measurements, piecing instructions, or templates. You need the Block Base software for that.

It was an absolute treat to flip through the book. As you can imagine, it was hard to narrow down a block choice each time! I ended up picking blocks I either always wanted to try or love but will likely never piece myself.

Each painting started with a pencil sketch. Using a good old ruler, a sharp pencil, and with an eraser nearby I translated the single block drawing into a quilt sketch. Sometimes I played with layout, sometimes it was straight grid.

Once the pencil sketch was done I started painting. These are the basic watercolour sets I bought just before the pandemic started. I tried to stick with the colours of the palette itself, so that I wasn’t trying to match colours day over day. I also stuck with 2-3 colours only. This was to force myself to concentrate on the design of the block, not try to create a watercolour quilt like I would sew one. Simplicity is sometimes a challenge for me so this was good practice.

On the first painting of the month I outlined the ‘seam lines’ of the quilt with a black pen. I really thought I would do this to all of them, but ended up not liking the look. I’d done it previously but something about it didn’t feel right this time. I suppose I just wanted a softer look.

It might be a little less ‘finished’? I’m not sure, but I still prefer it with the outline.

My watercolour skills are still very basic - this is essentially just colouring. But there is something about the movement of watercolour that is different than anything else. I am still smitten after my first forays into it over 2 years ago now. Loads to explore!

The Big Blue Blanket

While Improv may be my Love Language I have a kid who is all about physical touch. That means she loves anything soft and cozy. Fleece, yarn, or anything fuzzy. Sadly, quilts don’t make the grade. Despite having 2 giant robes, an Oodie, and two faux fur blankets she felt the need to make herself the blanket above.

With nine skeins of super thick acrylic yarn from the big box craft store and this short You Tube video she made herself a blanket in an afternoon. She loves it so.

This blanket would make an excellent gift, and she has done that for a friend. I strongly recommend finding all the coupons when buying the yarn though, the cost can add up.

This blanket provides an excellent amount of coziness. And it is a hug, truly. She is curled up with it currently as she deals with Covid and the subsequent quarantine this week. She’s double vaxxed and only experiencing symptoms like a bad cold, thankfully. We should all take comfort in anything we can these days. So if a big blanket of synthetic but soft yarn is the thing you need, then so be it. It also helps that Mama is delivering you treats on a tray every few hours.

December Morning Make 2021

When November blends into December…

Hmm, isn’t that every year?

Regardless, November Morning Make trickled into December so I decided to ride the wave. I had something else entirely planned, anticipating some medical events and the necessary downtime. But Covid changed those (things got cancelled, I stayed healthy) and I enjoyed that beginning so decided to keep playing.

The first bowl came from a 3mm rope I purchased with the rest of my weaving supplies from Flax and Twine. The pattern is in her book, Weaving Within Reach. It was fiddly to start and it took me quite a bit to find a rhythm. I totally did not understand the finishing directions. What I did, however, worked but I knew I was doing something wrong. It’s still a bowl and it is still staying together!

After that I hit one of our local yarn stores for more rope. Their stock wasn’t the same, but it was still a 3mm rope, just softer. With two colours under my arm I kept going on the rope bowl fun. I even went ahead and started playing with the weaving pattern, with different levels of design success. These bowls don’t have as much structure but the weave is tighter. And I figured out what I was doing wrong in the finished directions.

It turns out I only have one real, large, round bowl. Many bowls, but in great shapes that are anything but typical bowl shapes. A lot of flat bottoms or wide openings. So all the bowls (save 1) were made from the same mold/bowl, not that it is totally obvious from the finished results. It was a bowl from Alexia Abegg.

The next batch of rope that I bought was from Flax and Twine again. This time a 5mm, so slightly thicker. And, shorter in length so the bowls did not end up as big as the first one. No complaints about that, but it is a noticeable difference.

Speaking of differences, the big difference between the rope from Flax and Twine and that from my local shop was that softness. That results in a bowl with more structure or less, so it would be personal preference. I really liked Anne’s colours at Flax and Twine as the ones at my local were a bit garish (neon pink and lemon yellow).

After a few bowls I was feeling a bit bored and a lot cocky so I decided to try something different. Anne had sent along some linen twine with my order. Twine/rope? Same thing, right? Obviously the size is different, and the texture, flexibility, and length of the spool. I ended up using 2 spools, with a simple knot to join them when necessary. Needless to say, I used a small bowl as a mold, just a little IKEA bowl. Small is not easier or faster, not at all. It took me a week to make the one little bowl. It was fiddly. I also used more warp threads than the big rope bowls so there was more weaving to do on the whole. The result was totally worth it. It is a compact bowl but with beautiful structure. As you can see, I did something a bit different with the finishing. The edge treatment is the same, but rather than weave the ends in I made them obvious with a visible knot.

December satisfied my need for meditative yet creative action for Morning Make with these rope bowls. It’s also piqued my curiosity for different types of woven bowls and even basket weaving. I’m not done with weaving yet.