{"id":195,"date":"2006-03-11T10:02:10","date_gmt":"2006-03-11T17:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/?p=195"},"modified":"2006-03-11T10:02:10","modified_gmt":"2006-03-11T17:02:10","slug":"studio-friday-eyes-and-chas-birth-quilt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/?p=195","title":{"rendered":"Studio Friday: Eyes, and Chas’ Birth Quilt"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Chas was somersaulting in utero, around seven months, I began to stew up a birth quilt for him. At the time, Ford had checked out a book from the library that I found terribly inspiring, Ducklings and Pollywogs<\/a> by Lizzy Rockwell. The guache and watercolor illustrations were flat but the compositions rich in detail, and I’d find myself oggling the pages when I was on the phone, or sipping coffee. It was the theme that most intrigued me: paying reverence to a small pond throughout the year, noticing small changes, seasons. So I chose to use a pond theme for the quilt. One afternoon I tore the colors I loved out of old magazines, and after I had a collection, began to assemble them on a page in my sketchbook. After the arrangement seemed right, I picked up a glitter pen and made droplets fall upon the water, adding rings of vibrations through the pond, as if I was looking into the water during a rain. For more interest, I started drawing black eyes of frogs. I cut them out and pasted them onto the paper (I had made about twelve little compositions). After that, I was in love.<\/p>\n

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Of course, after selecting fabrics and playing with applique, I chose a composition based less on cryptic eyeballs peeking out of the water and more on the idea of lilypads, or pods, on the water. Something more evocative of how I felt as I sewed: healthy, whole, very pregnant.<\/p>\n

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I handpainted the watery background, staining the kitchen floor with aqua splatters. Scraps of pond colors littered the hallway floor, beneath the table where I worked. Natural specimens lined the window above my sewing machine: reeds, willow blossoms, seed pods and empty chrysalises. With my machine, I sewed ripples in the water fabric with gossamer thread, sandwiching soft layers and different textures of cotton. I tied the quilt with different shades of green, like the aquatic plants that slide between my toes when I wade.<\/p>\n

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Chas noticed the circles one day, very young, and smiled, running his finger along the seam of a circle. I was so pleased.<\/p>\n

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And I like the way it turned out, myself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Chas was somersaulting in utero, around seven months, I began to stew up a birth quilt for him. At the time, Ford had checked out a book from the library that I found terribly inspiring, Ducklings and Pollywogs by Lizzy Rockwell. The guache and watercolor illustrations were flat but the compositions rich in detail, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,3,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chas","category-daily","category-making"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}