i heart anatomical hearts and i heart me!

one of these days i'll start working on larger scale projects again, but not today. i've been having so much fun with mini quilts the past few months!


i just finished this one today - which was good, cause today is the (extended) deadline!



a while back, Jenna from SewHappyGeek posted about a challenge that she was hosting. the idea was that participants make a mini-quilt based literally or figuratively on a single playing card. i immediately thought that was an awesome idea, and tucked it away in the back of my mind to stew over.


(i know a lot of you reading my blog now are sewing and quilty friends, but i used to do quite a bit of mixed media art work, and i always loved the imagery of playing cards, and the awesome backs of vintage ones. i was way too lazy to dig out my own stash, so i spent some time one night searching flickr. i found so many gorgeous cards!)


in the meantime, i was sewing up the hearts for Cynthia's bee blocks. remember those? i wanted to do a sample of the anatomical heart applique before i cut into Cynthia's fabric, so i cut it out in these red prints first. i ironed on the freezer paper and turned the edges down, then basted it into place on the background. and then it sat there.



i didn't start on it until long after i finished Cynthia's, and i've been working on the hand applique whenever i had a few minutes in waiting rooms, etc, but omg, hand applique takes forever! and honestly, my stitches weren't even as teensy on my own heart, since i knew it was going on a wallhanging, not a quilt that would be used and laundered. i also switched my technique, as you can see quite obviously from the back! part way through the applique, i decided that the teensy stitches were putting too much strain on the fold of the applique, and i really think making longer stitches helped. after i'd finished the hand work, i pieced together a 1/2" border using the same prints as those in the heart.



i was so indecisive about this mini quilt, about how i wanted to do the letters, how i wanted to do the little hearts. i definitely wasn't going to do raw edge applique, after all the time i spent on the freezer paper applique! but i couldn't decide. i was going to piece the letters, and then i decided to paperpiece them, so i spent a whole bunch of time drafting up a paperpiecing pattern for the letters and the small hearts. and then i changed my mind AGAIN, and made little improv hearts and machine stitched the letters. in between there, i also considered hand embroidering the letters and the hearts, but i knew i wouldn't have time. machine stitching it is!



i went through the fonts on my computer and chose my two favourites that seemed to match the hearts as well. i printed them out in a few different sizes, then traced them onto tear away stabilizer. i sewed along the outlines of the letters and removed the stabilizer. then i put more stabilizer underneath the pieces, and filled in the centres of the letters. i did manage to get most of the stabilizer out of the stitches, but i didn't want to take the chance of leaving visible stabilizer on the front.



i spray basted the quilt front to cotton batting, but because i only had unbleached batting, i put a layer of white cotton in between so that it wouldn't show through. i echo quilted around the heart - i assume i'll eventually get bored with echo quilting, but it won't be any time soon! i love how it looks so much.



i also quilted around the outer border, but then i changed my mind and ripped it all out. so indecisive! i'm so glad that i did rip it out though, i like it much better like this. you can still see the stitch lines, despite my excessive steaming, but i'm going to wash the quilt so that it will shrink up a bit, and the stitch lines will come out then.



i added triangles in the corners for hanging, and bound it in the same fabric that i backed it in, a darker red cotton. i won't show you the back, my binding is terrible! i was rushing, and i was totally struggling with it. i don't know what i did wrong, it's totally uneven. it's fine from the front, but it definitely won't hold up to scrutiny! the quilt ended up being 10.5" x 12", barely squeaking past the 10" x 10" minimum.


so why Ace of Hearts?

hearts was pretty obvious to me, because i love heart imagery, whether it's anatomical hearts, flying hearts, sacred hearts, whatever. i thought about the Ace of Spades, because they're so often the most gorgeous card in the deck, but i wanted to stick with hearts.

i thought about the Two of Hearts, which is used fairly often in a romantic context, but i'm more interested in talking about less-traditional forms of love. in addition to that, i'd already drafted the pattern for this heart for the bee block, and using two of them would have made this quilt much bigger than i wanted it to be.

the Ace of Hearts appealed to me because i truly that think that focusing and working on self-love* is the most radical thing that a person can do. your relationship with yourself is the longest relationship you will ever have, and we live in a culture that continually tells us that we are not good enough. we're not worthy, we're flawed, we don't deserve to have a good life, to be happy, to be loved. we're not smart enough or too smart, not pretty enough or too pretty, too sensitive, or insensitive, we don't have the right kind of body, love, style, job. particularly for people who have been socialized as female, we have been under a barrage of messages from advertising and society since we were so young, and as much as we KNOW that the messages aren't true, they're sneaky, and they stick in our subconscious.

loving yourself can be a lifelong struggle, but it's so important. if you don't love yourself, it's way too easy to let yourself be treated badly. it sounds cheezy, i know, but if you don't feel like you're worth good things, good things don't happen to you. or if they do, you're too busy focusing on the bad things to appreciate them!

so that's why i chose the Ace of Hearts. i'll get off my soapbox now.


plus, the Ace of Hearts card has the letter A on it, and A is for Amy!




if you like my quilt, i'd be ever so happy if you wanted to vote for me! voting for the Most Popular quilt has started, and will be open until Friday 1 June at 10am GMT.

however, the other 13 entries are super freaking awesome, so i totally understand if you vote for one of them instead! ;) i can't even decide on my favourite, they're too amazing!




(can you believe that out of 14 entries, 3 were made by people named amy?)


(*did you snicker when you read that? perv. that's not what i was talking about, but the former sex educator in me feels the need to point out that taking care of your own needs is important too! if you don't know what gets you hot, how can you expect your partner to know?)


also, i'm linking this up to Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story

X-stitch Unicorn!

when i went to portland for the zine symposium at the end of august, i stayed with acquaintances who i didn't really know that well (even though they're awesome). it was a stressful and upsetting time for me, even though the symposium itself was awesome, and being able to stay in a safe place with fabulous people around helped a lot. i appreciated them letting me stay so much that i wanted to make them a thank you gift. they have a wall of unicorn pictures in their living room, and i thought something unicorn themed would be perfect.

the day after i got home from portland, i came across this cross stitch pattern book, copyright 1981, and i decided it was fate!




i chose the glasses case shown on the back cover, but i stitched it out much bigger. i used waste canvas on green cotton, and i think it was 10 count... the end piece was 6"x12", much bigger than a glasses case! i used all 6 strands of the embroidery floss, which i never do, but i wanted to ensure as much coverage over the green background as possible.





i added a bit of glitter in the outlines - silver metallic thread in the main outline, and gold metallic thread around the horn, and blue metallic thread for the eyes. i used one strand at a time, twisted in with the cotton floss.



it ended up taking longer than i'd anticipated to stitch, and then i ran out of the grey i was using for the outline, and then it sat for ages waiting to be finished. i couldn't buy stretcher bars that were the right size, so i decided i'd cut my own, so then i needed to wait for a day when i actually felt up to hauling the skil saw outside and cutting them that was also a day when it wasn't raining. and then when i went to assemble them, i was out of staples, so i had to go to the hardware store. and then after i'd assembled the frame, it still took me forever to cut a piece of batting and wrap it around the frame. i just had too many projects on the go, and no definite deadline, so finishing this kept getting pushed to the back of the line.

but it's done! and it's fabulous!

Queer Health - mixed media embroidery

this is the second piece that i had in the art show. i finished it the day that it had to be dropped off (i know, i know....), so i didn't get to post pictures of it earlier, and besides, i kinda felt like waiting until after the show to post it anyway.

i had mixed feelings about the piece going into the show, but the various reactions i received during the opening night party helped a lot. it just felt very simple, childlike almost. these aren't colours that i use regularly, but they were the colours needed to convey the message.



the original inspiration for this was the number of transguys in my life who i care about so very deeply, and worry about as much as i love them. our medical system is, in most cases, not set up in a way that male-identified people feel comfortable going for regular PAPs, exams, etc. it breaks my heart when i hear of another trans guy who has been diagnosed with a cancer that could have been prevented, or caught sooner.



about a week after i starting thinking about this piece, i ran across a really amazing campaign coming out of toronto - Check it Out Guys, so obviously there are others who feel that this is an issue that needs to be addressed.

so i started thinking about queer health in general, and the number of doctors who tell cisgendered women that if they're only sleeping with other cisgendered women, they don't need PAPs, which is complete bullshit, and i can't believe it's freaking 2010 and doctors are still so misinformed.



(and i know that the correct term is actually STIs, sexually transmitted infections, but i didn't know how many people outside of the sexual health field would be familiar with it, and i didn't think it would be as visible in the embroidery)

i really wanted to find a way to make the piece more inclusive, and so i spent a few weeks wandering around asking random questions of friends and acquaintances who were AMAB (assigned male at birth), which definitely got me some funny looks! i was curious about prostate exams, and prostate surgery, that sort of thing. everyone i talked to said that they'd never had a dr use a speculum for a prostate exam, and none of them were at an age when prostate surgeries are as common. i did a google search for anal speculum, but all of my results were for kink sites. and while a lot of stuff used in kink does have non-kink used, i wasn't sure if anal speculums were one of them!



i also asked trans women i knew if they required PAPs after bottom surgery, and was told no (though now, after doing more research, i realize that some trans women do need to get regular PAPs, depending on what kind of surgery they had)

since i wasn't able to do as many designs that focused on specific communities, or for that matter, on specific body parts, i did 3 more pieces in the pride rainbow colours.





i cut a piece of plywood for the base, and painted with with multiple coats of semi-gloss white paint.



then i marked where the speculums would touch the plywood and drilled a hole in the speculum and 2 in the plywood, so that the piece could be tied on with clear fishing line.



the speculums have a few dabs of clear glue in a few places where they rest against each other, just to add a bit more security.


and i left the bottom plain wood, with a few labels glued on.




so... what do you think? it was interesting watching people's reactions. some people immediately realized what the embroidery was done on, and got the meaning and appreciated it, but there were also people who seemed very embarrassed when they realized what they were!

Queer Arts Festival!! Visual Arts Exhibition!!

ohmygoodness, i'm so late posting this. i meant to post it before the show even started, and here we are, less than a week until it ends, and i'm finally getting around to it. this is one of the exciting things i mentioned last post - i entered several pieces in an art show back in february, and two of them were accepted! yayy!!

Pride in Art is a local group that has been around for over 10 years. it started out as a visual arts show, presented around the same time as Vancouver Pride each year (which is way later than most cities). 4 or 5 years ago it started to grow into the Queer Arts Festival, allowing spaces for performance arts, music, etc as well as the visual arts. i've been attending the visual arts show for multiple years now, as a dear friend of mine used to be involved and often had pieces in the show, and usually try to make it out to at least one of the other events each year. i originally got involved on a board level earlier this year, but unfortunately realized fairly quickly that it was more of a commitment than my health could handle, and had to step down.

despite that, i was still determined to actually submit something this year. i submitted the Beth Ditto porn pieces, my Dream Lover(s) pillow, and a third piece mixed media needlework piece that i really should post here, titled Queer Health. (now posted)

this year's theme was Queertopia; the Best Place on Earth?, so i tried to tailor my submissions around that in various ways. The Beth Ditto diptych was accepted, and so was the Queer Health sculpture piece. i actually submitted the health piece as an in progress submission, and of course, since i'm me, i was still putting the finishing touches on it the day i had to drop it off.... i swear i learned my lesson about procrastinating this time!

before the show started, the local LGBT newspaper Xtra did a feature on the show, and chose to use the Beth Ditto diptych (retitled My Kind of Porn for the show) as part of the article. this isn't particularly surprising for anyone who's familiar with Xtra and Pink Triangle Press, since the piece is about sex, and everyone knows Xtra's a teensy bit obsessed... ;) but it was still exciting!!


(if you'd like to actually read the article, you can click on it and go to flickr, where it's uploaded the original size, or you can read the article posted on Xtra's site)



in addition to that, the Queer Arts Festival had a large spread in the same issue of the paper, and it included the artist's names!

(again, you can click on it to see it larger - one of the pictures shows a portion of the amazing needle felted pieces by Karina Kalvaitis )



so! that was all exciting!

the show opened on July 27th, and July 28th was the official opening night party. it was, as usual, great fun, full of people that i hadn't seen in ages, and people who i'd just seen. i jokingly say that the QAF visual arts opening is like a queer family reunion every year, though the attendees are generally hotter than at your typical family reunion! this year was a bit subdued, due to the loss of a very special community member last december, but it was still a really important evening.

i posed next to the diptych and couldn't resist making a posing face....


the next one was a little bit more "normal"!

i was teased a bunch about my skirt (which i finished that afternoon) matching the pieces, but i really hadn't thought about that at all! i just really like red and black, which isn't that surprising, really.

my family, who couldn't be there, sent me flowers,


and my sister, who knows me so well, picked out a card with flocked and foiled leopard print!


i talked to a lot of different people, though definitely not everyone that i wished to talk to, and had some really random conversations, but that's pretty par for the course with me anyway! a couple of my closest friends came out to support me, and that was super amazing, especially since everyone in my family was back east at the time.

it was really awesome, and i'm really proud of myself for getting my ass in gear and actually applying. i think next year's theme is Games People Play, and i actually have a larger scale needlework piece that i've been planning in my head for ages that would perfectly fit the theme - perfect motivation! i just haven't decided if i should do it by hand or by machine, considering i already have multiple long term handwork projects on the go..... hmmm....

this is what democracy looks like! embroidered pillow

i actually made this pillow right around the time of the intent, it's fucking magic pillow, but kinda forgot to post about it....

however, i LOVE how it turned out, and i've already brainstormed a bunch of other projects to be done using the same technique.



i started out with a photo, one i posted on my olympics post back in february. it's a photo i took at the anti-2010 rally the same night as the olympics opening ceremony, and it doesn't even come close to showing how many people were there that day.

the day after especially, but for many days afterwards, i had protest calls and shouts running through my head, the most frequent one being "this is what democracy looks like!" (i was less enamoured by the "this is what democracy feels like" chant after it started raining and my back seized up, let me tell you!)

i knew i needed to stitch it up, and i really wanted to SHOW what democracy looked like in the same piece, so this technique worked really well.

angle


i sized the photo to how large i wanted the pillow, reversed it, and then printed it out onto two iron on transfer sheets. i carefully ironed them onto a good quality white cotton (i've found that the quality of fabric has a huge effect on the longevity of the transfer)

paper covering


after i transferred the image, i left the paper covering on. i knew i'd want to iron it after i finished stitching, and ironing it without the protective paper would ruin the transfer. i transferred the writing onto the protective paper, and used it as my stitching pattern.

i couldn't hoop this without interfering with the transfer, but it was fine, because the paper backing kept it stabilized.

i stitched in yellow floss, so that it would show up against the photo.
embroidery back


once i finished the embroidery, i decided to do a bit of patchwork around the image, to try to pull some other colours out of the image. i took the photo with me to the fabric store, and bought 3 different calico prints. i made a patchwork border and sewed it on, still with the paper attached.

patchwork


and then i made up the back, with a bit of piecing in the middle cause i love how that pulls everything together.
back


i also added a strip of yellow almost as a fake piping around the edges.

and this was the result!



(taken with flash)


it's not quite as clear as i was envisioning, i should have done the writing a little higher up, rather than centred on the photo, but it is a lot clearer in person than it is in a photo. and i love it anyway!

Fucking Magic!! pillow

a few weeks ago i came across this blog post by genderbitch posted on questioning transphobia, "Intent! It's Fucking Magic!".

omg, LOVE. for every annoying thing there is about the world of facebook, there are opportunities to be sent links like this one!

first off, i'm pretty political, especially in crafting land, but even more than i come across here. i believe whole heartedly in fighting oppression of all kinds, and i'm always trying to learn and to do more. i invariably end up in conversations about racism or sexism or cissexism or classism or transphobia or ableism or biphobia or any other ism or phobia where people who don't want to learn/accept/admit their privilege try to derail the conversation with whines about "intent".

ohh, but i didn't mean it that way!

tough cookies darlin.
a) half the time you DID mean it that way, you just don't want to admit it (and you may not even be aware that deep down that's how you meant it, but you still meant it).
and b) it doesn't matter how you meant it, it was still an offensive/oppressive thing to say.


so i adored the post because it was brilliantly true.



and second, you may have noticed, but i tend to get a little snarky at times. opening your mouth is considered to be bitchy if you're read as female, especially if you spent your formative years hanging out with queens and certain types of gay boys and inherited a propensity for sass along with your love of menthol cigarettes and false eyelashes.

hence, i love sarcasm. especially good, oh so deserved sarcasm. and oooh, is derailment ever an action deserving of good sarcasm.

pretty much immediately after reading it, i knew the title was a phrase i'd have to stitch. i hauled out my graph paper and charted out the letters, and then paged through a book on blackwork until i found a border i liked.


it's stitched out on green aida cloth that i thrifted a while ago, with dmc 973 for the yellow.


i found this awesome fortrel in my stash that matched both the green and the yellow, and i knew it was fate. it had to be a pillow! (plus, any excuse to use fortrel makes me happy!)

i didn't want just boring straight plaid on the front, so i cut up pieces and crazy quilted them together around the cross stitch.

i backed the aida with green felt, to ensure that no pillow stuffing showed through


i used plain plaid for the back, stitched them up together, stuffed it, and ta da!


i have a pillow to sit on top of my sofa, one pillow closer to my quest to cover the top of my sofa with pillows all great grandma style. (but with more interesting pillows!)




(genderbitch posted this originally on her own blog, and there are more responses to it there, if you're interested. for that matter, her blog in general is worth checking out. she's on a bit of a hiatus, but there are still tons of things to read!)

Happy Louis Riel Day!

well, at least if you're in Manitoba. it's not Louis Riel day in any other province, and apparently it's President's Day or something in the US.

remember how i mentioned my never ending "work safe" project? the one i've been hauling to every single medical appointment for months, because it was the only piece i was working on that wouldn't offend someone who saw it?





this is it. it's a portrait of Louis Riel, who is alternately considered to be a folk hero, a criminal, the founding father of manitoba, a murderer, and what we would now in a post 911 world call a terrorist. he was a metis leader in what would later become manitoba, and he was instrumental in creating a provisional government in the area, one that was alternately ignored and recognized by the canadian government as it suited them, but did eventually lead to the formation of the province of manitoba. it was through this provisional government that a man named thomas scott was executed for insubordination. this is the incident that many refer to when calling louis riel a murderer, while others maintain that it was perfectly within the rights of the provisional government to conduct the execution, given the law of the day.

louis believed that the metis should receive rights and goods the same way that the natives in the area had (and ya know, years later we recognize that it was all fucked and not the best deal anyway, but at the time....) and was considered to be a leader of the metis. he was from a french canadian metis family which was very religious, and originally it was thought that he may be a priest. he was sent to montreal as a young teen to study with priests there, but lost interest after his father's death and eventually returned home. as a result of his time in montreal, he had a lot more education than the majority of the people around him back home, and this combined with his ability to inspire a group through public speaking was a large part of why he became a leader of metis people.

he was also elected as a member of parliament multiple times, but due to the faction that considered him a murderer (including the cdn gvnt), it was never safe for him to attend the house of commons. he went once, and signed in, and it created a massive uproar. he spent a lot of time in exhile in the US, and then later returned to what would later become saskatchewan to again lead the metis people (at their request). the battle of batoche/the north west rebellion occurred at this point, and while he was eventually hung for treason due to his part in the battle, it was widely believed that he was truly executed in response to the death of thomas scott some years earlier. the canadian government's treatment of riel greatly indicated their respect for french canadians. john a macdonald, canada's first prime minister after confederation, was famously quoted as saying "he shall hang though every dog in quebec bark in his favour."

in addition to the political aspects of louis riel's history, he was also a very fascinating man from a religious standpoint. raised roman catholic, to the point of the expectation of entering priesthood, he had a strong and complicated relationship with the religion. in the later years of his life, he denounced the catholic church, claiming that the pope was an imposter, was not who god truly wanted to be leading the the church, and that riel himself needed to bring the church back to truthfulness. (part of this was encouraged by priests which sided with the english cdn govnt, louis saw this as a huge betrayal of their metis church members) louis professed beliefs which branded him as mentally insane by many, and in fact did spend time in a quebec mental hospital under an assumed name.

i think the red river rebellion and the battle of batoche/north west rebellion are kinda like the prairie's version of the civil war/the war between the states/the war of northern aggression, etc. this piece wouldn't have been as "work safe" if i'd been in manitoba working on it, because back there people have VERY definite opinions about Louis Riel! a vancouver friend of mine was visiting winnipeg last summer and she seemed so surprised that people still cared so much, over a hundred years later. but we do. and i assume people in saskatchewan probably do as well, at least to some degree.





i really really love how it turned out, though tat times i thought i'd never finish it! the basic outline is backstitch, very very tiny stitches which took forever, and then parts are filled in using satin stitch and a kind of adapted long and short stitch. the frame itself is about 8x10".


(if you're interested in the life of louis riel, and it really is super interesting, there are a lot of books on the subject, focusing on various aspects. Chester Brown wrote Louis Riel: A Comic Strip Biography, which is an excellent book to start with. i originally contemplated using an image from the comic book, but decided that this image, based on old photos, and which is most commonly associated with him, was most appropriate.

Winter Olympics 2010! x-stitch and protest signs!!

i know that i already posted this, a long long time ago, but given that the olympics have now officially started, i thought i'd post it again.






The Opening Ceremonies were last night, and yesterday afternoon/evening there was a huge march from the Vancouver Art Gallery to BC Place, where the opening ceremonies were. i was so amazed and inspired by how many people were there, and despite what mainstream media is reporting, the vast vast majority of the people marching were united in their reasons.

a lot of the time we get ourselves into a position (we being the left) of being really divided, because we all focus on different things. but yesterday was definitely about the games, about the games taking place on unceded native land, about the need for low income housing, about broken promises of using athletes housing for low income housing, about the environmental impact of the games, about the massive government cuts to social services and the arts, just in time to show off the sanitized and stolen "arts and culture" of this area, about the refusal to provide additional funding for social programs that will experience a huge increase in use during the olympics (such as battered women's support) due to the influx of tourists, about the "cleaning up" of the downtown eastside (poorest postal code in canada, for those that don't know) by physically moving homeless people to other areas, into shelters against their will, or arresting them for things like jaywalking just to get them off the streets so that the tourists don't have to see them, about the massive overspending and the debt we will be left with, and finally, the compromises to our civil rights and the huge amount of military and security personnel in vancouver waiting to enforce them. and that's just the short version of it, really! if you're interested in learning more, the vancouver media co-op has lots of pretty current updates on their site, as well as some explanatory videos.

i tried to take some pictures, but frankly, i'm freaking short! i ended up getting a lot more pictures of people's heads than i'd have liked. but i did get pictures of some of the signs, there were so many more! there were a lot more about native land, but most of them were banners, and banners were the hardest to get clear photos of.


the vancouver art gallery. this barely barely shows the people there. there were so many more behind us and on the other side of the lawn.


blurry, i know, but it was one of the more creative signs. plus, we talk a lot about the child poverty rate, which is atrocious, but we don't talk nearly enough about our seniors and our elders and their inability to access resources. i am so thankful that my relatives don't live in this province.










awesome.








(you might think it looks like a joint that they've drawn here. no, that's the olympic torch. it just happens to look like a joint, that's all!)


this is what greeted us at the end of the march. rows and rows of cops in riot gear.

for a peaceful protest. see above re: civil rights.