Candy Corn Thready

Here's a close-up of the bookshelves I've decorated for Halloween. On the top shelf is one of my turquoise-dyed alabaster bowls purchased in Cairo, a thready, an Egyptian cat carved from raw alabaster (or, more likely, it's composite alabaster poured into a mold or something like that). The lower shelf has a wonderful cross-stitch that my friend LC made for me. It's a halloween sampler, could it be any better?

A close-up of Candy Corn Thready, which measures about 3" x 4".

I used a base fabric that had printed candy corns. I got creative this time and made holes in the fabric and then embroidered around the edges. Don't like that effect, won't do it again or at least not so many times. I made the holes before I started adding the usual thready stitches, otherwise things could have gotten really ugly.

The other day I was contacted by a person who works for the publishing company Clarkson Potter, an imprint of Random House. I'm not going to go into the whole story, but the upshot is that she is sending me a review copy of the book Craft in America. I am soooo excited. It looks like such a cool book, based on the PBS series of the same name. You'll be hearing much more about it after I've gotten my hot little hands on it.

I had fun looking through the publisher's catalog. I was surprised to see quilting books. Maybe I shouldn't have been, but I always think of just three companies who really publish them. Obviously it's a bigger field than that.

Clarkson Potter publishes Quilts of Provence: The Art and Craft of French Quiltmaking by Kathryn Berenson. It's a beautifully illustrated book, of special interest to hand quilters. It has pictures of gorgeous antique quilts, petticoats and petassouns, the little quilts that women put on their laps when they were holding babies (in case of "accidents" it was easy to wash and bleach these). There is a bit of how-to as well.

It's nice to see that Roderick Kiracofe's book The American Quilt is still in print. Most of the books I love seem to be out of print these days. The American Quilt is full of info on textiles and the history of quilts. Lots of gorgeous antiques. It's an excellent book and I highly recommend it. [By the way, if you see a book pop up in my Library Thing in the sidebar, that does mean I recommend it. I've only added books I love.]

Clarkson Potter has a new book coming out, The Uncommon Quilter by Jeanne Williamson. I recently read about Jeanne's project in which she made a small quilt every single week for several years until she had 365 quilts. Pretty cool idea. Working that fast you'd have to just make the quilt and not fuss over the details.

I'm happy to discover that there are companies out there publishing books on quilting that maybe are more open to different approaches i.e. not so ruled by the Quilt Police.

I was contacted about the review book on the same day as I posted about the Class in a Box. Feels like good karma coming back to me. I'm hoping the book makes it here soon, it might even be a birthday present. My birthday isn't until thursday, so an early present would be even better.

I have been thinking about Class in a Box, but haven't done much more than gather a few orphans together and start a hand quilting sample. I have a mental backlog of tutorials I want to do first and that has priority. Speaking of which, I did a Face Tutorial today. Let me know if it worked showing you in paper or if you really need fabric. I'm still having allergy issues so I'm not keen on cutting into fabric much these days. sigh.

The binding is machined onto Cranky Witch and I should have her finished up in the next day or two. woohoo.

I've got a 19 pound putty tat on my lap looking for love, so it's time for me to go. Bye from Habibi and me.