busy days

• glorious vermont sugar maple foliage. 
• crabapples by the kitchen window.
• crabapple jelly, cooked up by batman. #retirementfun
• sunflowers.
• indigo blossoms.
• indigo leaves and stems.
• linen, dyed with indigo last weekend.
• linen and cotton, dyed this weekend with avocado skins and pits (left), and tansy blossoms (right). 

The days are tripping over one another during this season of urgency. What needs to happen in the gardens before the first frost, any day now? And what needs to be done before the snow flies? Did you make an appointment to swap the snow tires yet? Did you close the door to the hoop house, or shall I? The coyotes are singing every night now, sometimes so close to the house that Cora and Wilma look worried (if cats can look worried). I went out to the car this morning on my way to the gym in capris and sandals. I thought it was chilly, and when I started the car, the thermometer registered 37! Thank goodness I had grabbed my sweatshirt!

Check back tomorrow for Tuscan Tuesday. Later this week I'll catch you up on that quilt I wrote about a while back...

xo

sentimental stitching

Recently I was reminded of how fabric and stitching can connect us to one another, even across miles...and sometimes even lifetimes. I made this Komebukuro bag in memory of Alice, a woman I never met., who gifted me this sweet Japanese bunny fabric years ago. I sent the bag to someone very dear to me, who was a friend of Alice's. Stitiching circles of love just never gets old.

The pattern, crafted by kzstevens is available here.

To see other versions of the Modern Japanese Rice Bag look here and here.

Have you done any sentimental stitching? I'd love to hear about it if you have. Or have you received a stitched gift that helped to feel connected to the maker?

xo

tuscan tuesday::tablescapes

local cheeses and olives. 

 dining under the pergola, covered with a climbing rose.

 fresh pomegranate, wisteria, chestnuts and blackberries

tablescape, collected from the yard.

we ate dinner here for a week,

spoiled by our dear friend bill, 

who cooked with the freshest, 

local ingredients we could find.

from the meadow.

an art swap

I have a friend whose 8 year old son is a gifted artist. This summer, his work was exhibited in town. I really fell in love with this piece, so I asked him if we could do an art swap. He graciously agreed.

I copied his piece and enlarged it and traced it onto lightweight fusible interfacing. After some flipping and thinking and flipping some more, I somehow managed to get things just right and fused it to some black Kona cotton and then cut out the pieces and fused them onto some white fabric.

Then I stitched very close to the edges with black thread. Once everything was stitched down, I added batting and a backing and quilted with simple straight lines.

I embroidered some of the details, used black yarn for the hair, and I sewed real buttons down the front of the shirt.

Here is a copy of Broder's drawing and my quilted wallhanging side by side. This was such a fun project and when we swapped our pieces, Broder had just come back from a visit to NYC. He had seen some pieces by Picasso at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and we had quite a conversation about that artwork.

And now it is the first day of autumn and my heart is happy. It's my favorite season, and the colors are already beginning to turn here in Vermont.

And did you hear Greta speak at the UN Climate Action Summit?  Read about it here.  So good.

greta

In celebration and in honor of 

Greta Thunberg

and the leadership she has shared with

our broken world.

Godspeed, dearest one.

And if you are looking for some hope,

read this,

written by
Mary Annaïse Heglar.


(My quilts can wait for another day...)

getting our feet back under ourselves

After jet lag comes cleaning and setting things up for the cooler days ahead. Batman washed the floors, we rearranged the furniture and harvested beets, potatoes, apples and set onions to cure in the breezeway. A friend gifted us with his local plums, so we had roasted plums and plum cake and there are still a few in a bowl in the fridge. We have started to collect apples in buckets for the root cellar. Batman took a stab at making crabapple jelly and I think next year we will go full tilt with that project! We are removing screens bit by bit and washing windows as we go. We have been finding comfort in these small seasonal chores.

We set sunflowers by the front door to welcome three houseguests on Monday night, from two different places, and we all got along just fine. Far reaching conversations around the dining table, kindred spirits all. 

We talked about the relief we felt while we were in Tuscany, when we pledged to ignore the news. Yes, it's good to know about current events, but these days of 24/7 coverage, mostly of gloom and doom, a person can become mighty weary. The world was waiting for us as soon as we tuned back in. But I do it a lot less often and that feels really good. 

We've watched a few good films, and I thought you may have too. Tea With the Dames was wonderful. And On the Basis of Sex was a gem, too. Do you have suggestions for movies that are not depressing or difficult to watch? I'm not saying those sorts of films are not worth watching...I'm just saying that's not what I'm looking for right now. :-)

My word for 2019 is "productive". Come back tomorrow to see a quilt that took 10 years to finish (can you say "UFO")? And a collaborative project I did with an eight year old son of a friend.

xo

hello friends!

 we have been away.

 one morning we were in vermont,

and the next morning we were looking out of our bathroom

window in florence, italy.

and then a bit later we were watching the sunset from

our rented villa in the chianti region of tuscany.

we splurged on a wonderful trip to italy with dear friends 

from our days living in old san juan, puerto rico...

35 years ago!

celebrating batman's retirement, our 40th anniversary

and a reunion with our pals,

we bought tickets, found a house sitter, packed lightly

and headed to europe.

i'm still processing the beauty we saw,

the conversations we shared

and the experiences we had over our 10 day visit.

One of the most wonderful takeaways from our trip was the total immersion we experienced, nestling into the sense of place we found in Italy. I hope to share that with you here, on "Tuscan Tuesdays".

I'm committed to being here at sew and sow life more often, with bits of sewing and gardening and pausing to savor the season, so check back soon if you would like to ramble with me. Finding joy and hope and Light are on the agenda.

It's good to be back. xo

18 years later

just popping in for a moment

to remind all of us

to lean in to the Light.

Just shower the people you love with love,
show them the way that you feel...
-James Taylor