Side Steps

In the evenings I curl up and work on a felted book. It is number three in a series. The first and second book are in my Guild's show "What is Out is In". At first this theme brought no pictures or images to mind. But I rolled it over and over and finally came up with conservation. In our history there has always been little or no concern regarding this small blue planet we inhabit. We dumped everything in our rivers and oceans and gave little consideration to the air or earth. But now it is very *In* to be *Green*.



My books tell the story of beetles. Beetles that are disappearing and are on the Endangered List. The beetle is something most of us eeeeyuuu and step on. But in Victorian times women decorated their clothing with metallic beetle elytra and even had gold chains with live beetles pinned to their gown as living jewels. Yet many species are disappearing and it should be marked that as lowly beetles die the ecosystem is disrupted.


My first book started with Rosalia Alpina. The beautiful blue beetle above. It is disappearing from Hungary and Germany as the Beech forests are felled. The second book is based on The American Burying Beetle. It is found only is four places now and one of these is Block Island, off the coast of Rhode Island.





The third in the series will be a star book. It is what I'm working on in the evenings. The long piece is about 7inches high and will fold into a star shape. There will be no beginning or end and each page will have
different beetles, dragonflys and other small insects that are endangered.

So now I return to work. I'll have pictures tomorrow of the latest blocks for the quilt. I finished Phlox today.

Processing

I've always done cartoons. For some reason my life like drawing looks lopsided and is not very satisfying for me. I spent several summers in the Sierra Nevada mountains painting wildflowers trying to do botanical renderings without much success. So I always return to cartoons.

With the bed quilt I first draw in pencil on a piece of paper then trace over with a marker. I cut sections out as patterns for the silk.

This first block has been the most complex piece so far and will take a considerable amount of embroidery, I think, to make it pop. Or as I call it: Sing.


I have finished another block and have the fifth on the table ready to cut out. But, I am getting ahead of myself. The third block was the sunflower. Which really sings without much embroidery. I got the colors right.















The photo to the right is close to actual color...on my screen. I love to embroider and bead on felt. But as I wish to have my quilt washable, no beads. The sunflower would support fabulous bead work I think.

So off for a walk in the woods with the dogs then felting upon my return. The weather is actually thinking about spring and the outside temp is 45 F today. The icicles have melted and the sun is shining.