Embroidering Blind Contour Drawings: The Sister Shirt

Blind contour drawings

Blind contour drawings are a fun, relaxing art exercise that supposedly improve your observation skills and hand-eye coordination. They can also make for some hilarious sessions with fellow artists. We've done several rounds of blind contour drawings on Zoom over the past few years since my sister and I formed a weekly maker group with her granddaughters during the pandemic. 

In our sessions, each of us chooses another person on the Zoom screen without telling anyone who we've chosen. We then start our drawing with the following rules: Don't lift your pen off the paper from start to finish; don't look down at what you are doing, just keep your eyes on the screen. After a set time period (about two minutes) we each show our drawings and the others guess the identity of the portrait subject.

The sister shirt (front)

During a gloomy interlude this winter featuring dark skies, damp chill, and atmospheric rivers, I searched through my closet for likely upcycling candidates and found this bright green linen thrift store find. Originally a long and frankly blah tunic with no pockets, the shirt was first transformed by cutting off a sizable portion of the bottom and converting those scraps into generous pockets. Vintage buttons from my collection embellished the piece.

Vintage buttons

Shirt back

The next step was to get my sometimes-hopelessly-spaced-out grandnieces and sister to send me their blind contour drawings. Once in hand I sorted through, picked out four, and transferred the drawings onto the shirt using carbon paper. The final step was stitching over the transferred drawings, adding "tethers" that extend to the bottom of the shirt so the heads look life floating balloons.

Blind drawing of Aleida by Nana

Blind drawing of Cici by Nana

Blind drawing of me by Nana

Blind drawing of Nana by Nana

You will note that all of the blind drawings used for the shirt were by the artist known as "Nana," my sister Judy, who has firmly and repeatedly identified herself as a non-artist. Blind contour drawing eliminates judgments and labels and allows everyone, no matter how they identify, to have big time fun. Nana's drawings were selected for this project because they simply suited the design best. The shirt is called the Sister Shirt because it depicts two sets of sisters, two generations apart.

A fun project from beginning to end.

Summer of Invention #3: Toe Bugs

 

The Problem

First let me say this isn't about the cost of a sock. This is about fighting back against the throw-away, out-of-control consumerism that has brought us to the brink of the apocalypse. It is also about combatting the emotional embarrassment of finding yourself at someone's house or, worse yet, a spiritual retreat in Ojai, where it becomes clear that the exception is that everyone is expected to remove their shoes. And it is about cute little bugs. It is a win-win scenario. Part of the Summer of Invention has been about tuning in to quotidian, annoying little problems that generally go unnoticed and figuring out how to fix them. 

A graphic take on problem identification: sock toe holes

The Solution

I have always wanted a darning egg for purely aesthetic fondling possibilities. I have never known how they are actually used. I ordered a cheap one online that came with darning needles and a set of embroidery thread. It arrived within 24 hours. The kit cost less than a good pair of socks.

The solution: a darning egg kit

I then spent about twenty minutes watching online how-to videos regarding darning and felt I had grasped the general idea.

The Toe Bugs

As a rank beginner when it comes to darning eggs, I found my first toe patch looked scraggly and had a couple of random bits sticking out. It looked sort of like a bug. This was the "aha" moment; I rethreaded the needle, went back in, and added a couple of legs and antenna. 

The first wonky toe bug

Colors that pop make for happy toe bugs

This is admittedly an invention far behind the times, a recycled invention from yesteryear. Which may be a lesson about thinking twice before you dispose of anything, including ideas.

Summer of Invention #2: Hot Water Bottle Babies

 

The bottle babies

I have felt an affinity for the late Queen Elizabeth ever since I read years ago that she would wander the cold and drafty hallways of Balmoral Castle clutching a hot water bottle to her tummy. Even though I live in Oakland, California, which has what Rand McNally has declared the best climate in the world, the foggy, rainy winters can chill you to the bone if you live in a 1920s apartment building with one iffy radiator. I have been cuddling hot water bottles during the winter months for years, but they weren't doing much for my sense of aesthetics, leaving me feeling like a frumpy old queen.

The bottles need a cover to be both safe (protecting you from a scalding hot bottle), removable, and washable. The covers they arrived in from Amazon do the job, but they are neutrally ho-hum at best, and quickly become tired and worn looking after multiple washings.

The bottles

Original covers

The solution? Upcycled thrift store infant onesies, scored for $1 each and adapted for use.

The end result

The hot water in the torso and fiber-filled arms and legs make the bottle extraordinarily comfortable, and the onesies can be easily removed using the front fasteners and tossed in the wash.

The how-to:

Click to enlarge

And there you have it, a pleasing and practical solution to a problem of royal proportions.

Official royal portrait

Close-up

Exploit Your Kids for Divine Interior Decor

In recent years outsider art has hit the mainstream art market and as a result has become a very pricy proposition. My apartment is full of wonderful, joyful finds over the past decades from the pioneer outsider art oasis Creative Growth in Oakland, and I am happy I stocked up when I could; these days the works by the talented crew of artists there are beyond my price range.

However, I have discovered a rich pool of untapped outsider art close to home that is just begging to be exploited: kids' art. Like outsider artists, children are untrained with no preconceived notions of what body part should be where, the constraints of physics and reality, or what color the sky should be. As when experiencing works by outsider artists, children's art often surprises and delights me and makes my brain travel to territories it wouldn't have travelled to otherwise.

Best of all, it is plentiful and free. Children are more than happy to churn out art for you and I have found they will (sometimes) be willing to work on specific commissions and meet your demands for specific subject matter. I am not the first to make this discovery and apply it to interior decor. The popular deep-dish pizza restaurant Zachery's in Oakland has an exuberant, entertaining interior decorated with children's  drawings of slices of pizza.

After repainting my kitchen my attention turned to an oft-neglected aspect of interior decor: the inside of cabinet doors. In this case I had painted the interior of the doors turquoise blue, and after a few days of living with the result I realized I needed something to break up all of that blue. For this project I tapped into my stash of art by my grandnieces accumulated over the past decade. I scanned the works of art, manipulated them in Photoshop and changed the sizes, flipped things horizontally, and made multiples as needed. After several failed experimental techniques I settled on the strategy of using a water-based wash that incorporated the same turquoise paint as the cabinet interiors and then used Modge Podge to apply the images to the cabinets.

Cabinet exteriors with brass label plaques

Brass label plaques add a little fun and interactivity to the cabinet experience.

The Dragons cabinet features artwork by the now-12-year-old, who has developed an extraordinary eye for anatomy, a passion for dragons, and a love of online graphic tools and coding.

The Dragon cabinet

Note in the background above you see a photo of my early art muse, my great-grandmother, who was around until I was 16. I like the idea of her overlooking art by her great, great, great-granddaughter.

The Monsters cabinet features early works by both girls during a commissioned art session when they were perhaps five and seven. I told them I needed monsters. At the time I was intent on hand-stitching a monster shirt, which I eventually gifted to their grandmother.

The final cabinet door features what may be the last art we ever see from the now-10-year-old who, like so many children, has reached some sort of unfortunate socially-induced turning point and decided she isn't any good at art. I think the work displayed here, which she originally drew and put together as a little book she mailed to me last year, is eloquent proof that she is wrong.

So there you have it. Go forth and exploit your children for creative outsider images, inspiration, and ideas for interior decor, for graphic design, for textiles. If you don't have any children of your own, go exploit someone else's children. That's what I have been doing for the past fifty years, and I think the children along the way are none the worse for it.

Note: The blues are all over the place in these images. All of the cabinet interiors are a consistent tone of turquoise blue; photographing them in different light radically alters that tone.

Control Freak Merit Badge

 

Another merit badge!

The Awards Jacket, inspired by a memorable, albeit brief, stint in the Girl Scouts, has been an immensely satisfying ongoing project which involves inventing and bestowing upon myself an assortment of accolades. My merit badges are devoted to things like being able to use chopsticks, having a belly that makes me an excellent lazy floater, etc. Three recent badges (two self-awarded, one hand-embroidered by a grandniece) relate to surviving the pandemic.

My latest medal may be my favorite so far. Inspired by a vintage medallion gifted to me by a friend who knows me well, this may be my crowning achievement — an award for being an intrepid control freak. As one old boyfriend noted, "What would all of us do without you ordering us around and telling us what to do? How would the world go on?" I couldn't agree more.

In truth, however, I realize how much easier life would be if I didn't have to carry the burden of knowing so very much more than everyone else about what should be done in every circumstance (even those in which I lack all practical knowledge, which I have never found a deterrent). I wear the medal as much as a reminder to check those impulses as to acknowledge myself unabashedly as the control freak that I am.

Medal front

Medal back

The original medal gifted to me is from a "young birds" pigeon race in Stafford, England in 1936. What better symbol of control than to successfully order a bunch of pigeons about? However, 1936 is a particularly poignant year in the annals of pigeons and human history, with one incident in particular pointing to the perils of trying to control a flock of twitchy birds prone to hysteria. During the opening ceremonies of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, 25,000 pigeons were released. Unfortunately, a cannon was fired at the same time, causing all of the pigeons to release their bowels in utter panic. One athlete, Louis Zamerini, a distance runner, describes the scene: "...you could hear the pitter patter on our straw hats, but we felt sorry for the women, for they got it in their hair."

Control gone wrong. It happens far too often. To create my medal I added a bit of chain and used some ribbon stitched over a cardboard base to give it a bit of a military swagger and added a pin backing.

The control freak medal

The final result has now been installed on my awards jacket, which really should have a soundtrack of Beatles-type honky tonk music as I wear it out and about.

Advent Calendar 2021: Life is a Giant Puzzle

The advent mystery bags: Which day is which?

This year's advent calendar for two young Colorado girls layers mystery upon mystery and puzzle upon puzzle. The calendar arrives as 24 sealed and decorated bags, and a long length of recycled lace for use as the advent garland. The bags attach to the garland using the glittery pipe cleaners that seal each bag.

The garland fixings.

But wait a minute!

There are no numbers on the front of the bags indicating the day of the month. What is going on? The puzzle starts at assembly and the first round involves a game for the whole family.

 

Note the little triangular tab labeled "clues" on the front of each bag. If you pull on the "clues" tab, a long strip of paper emerges with a set of clues that will help you figure out what day of the month to write on the bag. The clues start with difficult to "weirdly difficult," and proceed to get easier and easier as you continue to pull on the tab. Once you have figured out the correct number, you write it on the front of the bag.

 

The clues revealed!

Maker tip: Note that replicating this idea is far easier than it looks. Decorate 24 bags any way you wish. Cut a horizontal slit about a third of the way down on the front of the bag, the same width as your long question strip. Glue a triangular piece of paper with the word "clues" written on it to the end of the strip that contains the most difficult questions. Feed the other end of the strip into the slit on the bag, and fold the "clues" triangle down so it rests flush against the bag. To save you hours and yours of obsessive-compulsive computer time, I have created a PDF of all of the question strips that you are free to use. The link: Advent 2021 Question Strips.

Sample clue sheet (click to enlarge)

But at this point the fun has just begun. Once the numbers game is over and all of your bags have the correct day of the month and have been attached in order to the lace garland, participants are instructed to turn all of the bags over so the back of the bag is facing outward.

Whoa, a secret message!

A secret message is revealed! In this case the message reads: "When you have figured out these puzzles and think that you are done, you will learn to your amazement: The games have just begun." And yes folks, that is exactly twenty-four words, one word on the back of each bag.

So what is inside? Puzzles! Turns out that buying batches of puzzles online is very affordable. I alternated between 3-d wood puzzles, 3-d metal puzzles, and blank jigsaw puzzles they may embellish with their own artwork.

Inside the bags: more puzzles!

And more puzzles...

...and more puzzles.

And of course, each bag also contains a small piece of candy for each girl each day.

But wait, there's more...

Just to completely wow my little audience of two, I decided to throw in a few rounds of mail art, which will arrive throughout the month of December. Using the book, "Tricks and Puzzles," by Silver Dog Press, 1973, I used their muddy, black and white images of old German picture puzzle postcards from the turn of the century and recreated them at full postcard size by recreating the images using water colors. (Note I have searched far and wide on the internet for examples of these puzzles but so far my only source is this book, which is available used on Amazon). The idea is to randomly send one postcard every few days from an assortment of four different picture puzzles so that the recipients have to guess what the total picture will eventually look like and which postcard fits into which puzzle. I offer just one example below.

Sample puzzle postcard: What could it be?

The answer becomes apparent when you receive all four of the postcards that are part of this picture postcard puzzle.

Full set of four postcards

And that wraps up the 2021 version of the advent calendar.

You Deserve a Medal

Medals for valiant children

Every once in a while life throws you a scary curve ball that requires true grit. I believe those life moments warrant some sort of acknowledgement and recognition. I have offered various options for entertaining medals over the years, including medals for myself stitched to my ongoing Awards Jacket, and the funky delight of making medals out of recycled ribbon and scrap in the post, Recycled Ribbon Awards. 

This time around, the medals go out to my two grand-nieces who have just been uprooted from the town and school and friends they have known their entire lives to move to a new town and new school. Of necessity, everything happened very fast, they found out about the move a week before school was to start in August, and the family had not yet found a house in the new location. As a result, they started a new school and plunged into the great unknown during an interim stay in a Quality Inn. Now that is tough. And that deserves a medal. I proceeded to make some and sent each of them an awards presentation package in the mail.

Label on each custom-made award box

Before the move, the girls and I had been discussing the concept of multiple dimensions, parallel universes, and those critical moments in life where one move or one decision or one seemingly trivial even sends you down an alternate life path. The twelve-year-old began to refer to these as the great "what ifs."

The awards were accompanied by the following documentation:

The medals incorporate old chains and salvaged jewelry findings and bits of broken jewelry. They also each include a small copper charm with the letters "Aug." on them because they entered a parallel dimension when they moved in August. Note that I just happen to have an entire small bag of these copper "August" charms purchased as a scrap find. This is the first time since I found them over thirty years ago that I have had occasion to use them.  The medals also incorporate a feature piece — a vintage piece of French theatrical costume appliqué, purchased from the collection of French opera and theater costumery at the store Tinsel in Berkeley, California. They may be worn as a necklace or hung on a wall.

Medal for a 12-year-old entering an alien middle school

Medal for a 10-year-old entering a new elementary school

Let's face it, times are tough. And sometimes you deserve a medal.