seahorse & jellyfish/butterflies, blossoms and feathers

It's my mother's birthday on Wednesday, but since we had planned to go to the OB's (post hockey game) we just ended up celebrating yesterday. She asked me, yesterday for a silk scarf to go with a new gray dress. I said I would choose red, but she mentioned salmon (as a colour). Here is what I came up with. I had some striped greyish silk. I printed it with the jellyfish and seahorse blocks in salmony pink.


I had some hand-woven Thai floral silk (oh, the wonders of the Sidney Thrift Store!), which I embellished with butterflies, blossoms and feathers in black, and tints of salmon, peach, orange and pink. Honestly, it's less busy than that sounds:



I painstakingly sewed the two rectangles together. Silk can be tough and finnicky to deal with.





I actually wear a lot of silk scarves* but have never previously attempted to make one.

*Ok, actually, it's a running joke: how many scarves does have on her person at any give time. But they are the solution to style + unpredictable weather: 40 million French women can't be wrong. I have um, several.

it's spring, BECAUSE IS I SAY SO

Marjorie, the coffee lady says that there is always one last snowfall. It is considerably colder today than yesterday. However, April is immanent (how this could possibly be true, I cannot say... but it is). So, I say, it's spring. It's bad enough I am fighting off a second cold this year, after not being sick in years... I will not abide more snow. Hear that, elements?

When Minouette wasn't hogging the sunny seat by the sewing machine (yes, I make these things with the antique Singer, because the more modern Singer is on the fritz) I managed to make a pillow yesterday:






So the cherry branch and blossoms in yellow on fuschia, and the two butterflies in yellow on turquoise are printed by hand (with a Japanese ukiyo-e style baren) on fabric. The two print fabrics are newly available at The Workroom, which I follow on flickr, to the chagrin of my wallet. I love the memento mori aspect of the echino fabric on the reverse. Squirrels, deers, birds, ladybugs, butterflies and skulls, oh my! See, they know, butterflies are the new pirates. ;)

I have a postcard of a memento mori in my micro-studio. It is Picasso's Nature Morte Avec Crane, a painting I saw one visit to San Francisco, when they had a retrospective of art he made during WWII. In context, the painting was particularly moving. The juxtaposition of life and death is traditional. This being Picasso, those are the most suggestive looking leeks ever painted. But he has quite literally scratched the date into the canvas: 14/3/45 - the day Paris was freed. A day of celebration, and a day to remember those who were lost.