What Do You Do When You Need To Sooth Your Soul?

     Do you have an art activity that helps sooth your soul? I've found two things that give me some relief when things are bothering me. One is to repair torn or old cloth items and put them back into good use. The other is to sit down, listen to natural sounds of birds and wind rustling leaves or turn on music while I hand sew free-style embroidery stitches. I learned this peaceful type of meditation when I took an online class with Jude Hill. Until then I only did machine sewing. Now I love doing both. I find that each has its place in my artwork.
     Awhile back I posted here about how one of my favorite shirts got ruined by bleach.

My "boyfriend" shirt

In that post, I showed how I put some patches of cotton fabrics on it and started to boro stitch to give it character. I've been so busy working on my dyeing projects, that I haven't had time to work on the shirt much. But this week, I needed some calm time and I sat down with it and stitched away and it's finished.

Better than Ever

     Now I like it better than before. It actually belonged to my husband and I borrowed it to wear it.

detail of the stitches

I stitched a floral motif in the upper right because that was on the fabric and it was fun. I chose not to cover all the bleach  with fabric because when I auditioned fabric in those places, it looked too much like a bib. So now, I have to wait until at least late October to wear it. The temperatures here are in the high 90's (Fahrenheit) and will be until then. I doubt my husband will want to wear the shirt anymore with its new style. 

     There are things we can all do to get involved in fixing ills of our ailing society and we should, but  we also need to take care of our own mental well being while all this craziness is going on. When I can fix one small thing in an artful way, it is soothing and satisfying. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts to let the artists know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

How Do You Deal With A Clothing Disaster?

     Have you ever had a favorite shirt that got ruined? My husband has a pullover that I call my boyfriend shirt. Sometimes I take it out of his closet and put it on. When he sees me wearing it he says he was going to wear it that day. It's a running joke in our family. One day a couple of months ago I got a spot of grease on the front of it so I took out the OxiClean and sprayed some on before throwing it in the washing machine with the other laundry. After I took the laundry out of the dryer and sorted the clothes, a large part of the front of our favorite shirt was bleached out. The OxiClean had never done that before. It's not supposed to do that!
     When my husband came home, I said, "Well, you know when something bad happens, you have to count all the good things in your day." Then I showed him the shirt and told him what I did. I kiddingly asked if he put bleach in the OxiClean container. And you know what? He said maybe! He said he did put bleach in an empty OxiClean container to use in the garage and somehow it must have got put in the laundry room by mistake. But he never took off the label or relabeled it with "Bleach". Luckily, I didn't spray any of that bleach onto any other laundry that day. Here is that poor shirt.

My damaged boyfriend shirt

     I didn't want to throw away the shirt and my husband didn't want it anymore, so I decided to try some boro stitching on it. I cut out some patches from cotton fabrics I had and pinned them on. And I picked out some embroidery floss. When I get time in between my homework assignments I stitch on the patches. As the stitching gets added, it blends the patches into the fabric of the shirt. The stitches are meant to show a lot and the bleached out part of the shirt is meant to show, also. 

stitching continues and will change colors

     And the shirt will be all mine (maybe).

     The other thing I've been stitching is a small bag that used to belong to my father. He carried his golf tees in it. He passed away in 1993. I've had the bag sitting around and not being used for anything and decided to honor it. 

Golf tee bag

As stitching is progressing on one side

     So that is how I dealt with this particular clothing disaster. Incorporate part of the disaster into the artwork of the stitchery. I think it will work. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their blogs so that they know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

To Boro Or Not To Boro?

     When is it appropriate to add the hand stitches that are characteristic of the Japanese patchwork known as Boro? I love the look of it. I'm no expert on Boro, but I've done some reading on it and I've browsed images of it on Google and on Pinterest. I've even created a Boro board on my Pinterest page of images that inspire me. If you aren't familiar with it, basically what I've learned is boro used to be from rags that were worn by Japanese peasants and were patched and repaired with stitching.  Often, they used fabric that was dyed using indigo, so usually you will see blue fabrics when you look up boro. Now, when you see boro fashions, you will see patched fashions with large stitch work. Some of it looks ragged and some of it looks very refined. If you want to see it on Pinterest, be very careful when you type "boro", because Pinterest keeps changing your word to "boho". You have to keep changing it back to "boro".  If you visit my Pinterest page https://www.pinterest.com/reginabdunn/ you can see my board on boro.  Or you can Google "boro stitches" and go to images to see what it looks like.
     Anyway, I decided to experiment with boro and create some clothing for myself in this style, but in a little of the more refined way. My husband got to be the guinea pig for my first venture. He asked me to repair two holes in his khaki shorts. I used one of the tutorials I found on Pinterest as a guide.
1.) I trimmed the edges around the hole.
2.) I cut a patch of patterned cotton fabric a little larger than the hole.
3.) I placed the patch inside the hole and hand sewed a running stitch around the hole using a darker thread.
4.) I cut a patch of thicker cotton fabric larger than the patch and pinned it inside on top of the other patch.
5.) I hand stitched up and down a pattern of stitches all up and down the patch to reinforce and to decorate.

first patch from the outside

from the inside

second patch from the outside

If I had just done the patching normally, I would have used a khaki-colored thread that blended with the fabric and not done that pattern of stitching. And I would have used a khaki-colored patch. But this is boro. I made sure to tell him how special it was. :) 

     Then, I had the idea to make myself a boro Christmas scarf using leftover Christmas fabric scraps I have. I decided to model it after some of the images of scarfs from my Pinterest board. So I cut rectangles from my scraps and pieced them together until I had two large enough pieces and then put right sides together and sewed them, leaving an opening large enough to push the right sides back out.  Here's my scarf.

Christmas scarf

     The intention was to add large boro hand stitching to each section in contrasting thread to make it look more informal and worn. But now, I think I like it just as it is. So that's why the title "To boro or not to boro?" I think, in this case, I should not add stitching. Maybe, I'll piece a bunch of denim rectangles together and then hand stitch with green, red, and gold floss to boro another scarf for next year. Can boro even be used as a verb? I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts so that the artists know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.