My UFO Factory

I am frequently reading quite a few creative and quilt related blogs and I can already see that 2009 will be the year of final settling a score with the UFOs (Unfinished Objects), all around the World.

I have seen a nice initiation at Abyquilt, which could help anyone who participates in: „Participants will try (we know life interferes sometimes!) to complete at least ONE craft project by the end of each month. This can be something you've had partly done for a while (a WISP!) or a pattern or a kit you bought ages ago that you finally get around to making.”

You may join anytime, which is good, since it holds me back that my UFOs are all huge, usually big wall hangings or unfinished king size quilts. I am unsure whether I could show a finished piece in every month. But I will start a lighted version for myself. Jannimary has her plans listed on her sidebar, her started works and the finished ones separated (she participates in the “One Project a month Challange” as well). While Karen shows what she is making in her actual project. I like both methods, so I mixed them in my blog and the result can be seen on the sidebar.

However for now (in defiance of the world’s currents) I’ll just continue to create UFOs. While we were sick, I couldn’t do else but sit in the couch and embroider. It was somehow important for me to do definitely small pictures, hence I sewed parts from one of my previous work.

Last year I got a whole roll of home made linen from my grandmother (her mother and grandmother wove it at home by their hands!), which is a big treasure. It’s rough weaving, natural-colored (self-colored) and I thought that a similarly beige, tan embroidery would look good on it.

Back in 2007 I designed 12 redwork pictures based on William Morris’ art, and embroidered those. I designed them to be a Duble Irish Wall Hanging Quilt. Since this has been an UFO, it waits the red blocks, but just to be sure I sewed them with blue ones too, and these await the Hungarian blue-dying blocks. I know I am hopeless case.

I “cut out” from these designs six parts now. By the time we got better, I finished with all of them, but since I only made them for the embroidery, now I really stop short before continuing. For now I only know that I want to make a wall hanging from them, but similarly to the thread with natural and beige (maybe some tan) fabric blocks.

However I don’t have these kinds of fabrics at home, so I have to try and buy some, or do something new: paint for myself. Up until that, my considerable UFO collection has grown with new ones.

Though I may look at it as these are started wall hangings, and for those the fabric casting is ongoing. ☺ It’s all about the point of view, isn’t it?

Looking Back II. – Home Blessing

My cousin and his family have a little farmhouse in a small village in the northern part of Hungary close to the border.

When they bought this house it was ruinous condition, however since then they’ve been working a lot to rebuild and build on an extension to it. The work hasn’t been finished yet, but it is coming on well. When they first set their eyes on the old building in a romantic and prolific garden.

And here it is today.

And this is a bonus picture for you guys: a printed–painted pattern calendered with a rubber roller on a white basic that came out during the dismolition–excavation. Unfortunately the condition of the plaster was so bad that it was impossible to save the original pattern, so only a picture of it will remain for the posterity.

Even though we cannot visit my cousin and his family in their farmhouse so often that we would like to, we always spend good time there together. At the end of the garden there is a babbling creek on which their ducks with noisy gaggling swim about in all the summertime (they are always really cute). Over the creek there is a small forest just beginning.

Because they are running a second household there, for Christmas and other family occasions we often give them presents that suit for their little farmhouse and they can also use them there (for example self-made tablecloth or bedclothes). For this Christmas we figured that it would be nice if I made a Home Blessing for them.

In the usual old Hungarian farmhouse there was always a Home Blessings on the wall. As far as I know it is also used by other nations, however when I googled on the Internet I found the Irish people have a bunch of Home Blessings with different texts. In Hungary the text is always the same with only some difference in the design at most. Of course the Home Blessing is almost always embroidered with all the regions having their own style and pattern. This is the text in English:

Home Blessing

Where belief is, there is love
Where love is, there is peace
Where peace is, there is blessing
Where blessing is, there is God
Where God is, there is no dearth.

This Home Blessing embroided in Kalocsa style (pronunciation: Kalocha). It is a traditional Hungarian embroidery named after the town of Kalocsa, where it originated. "Writing women" in this town on the Danube in Southern Hungary draw their designs on white or pastel colored fabrics. Daisies, marigolds, cornflowers, poppies, lilies, tulips and roses furnish the colorful motifs.

This is another example made with “written embroidery” from Kalotaszeg. Kalotaszeg is located in Transylvania between the River Körös and the River Kalota. The “written embroidery” is made on homespun canvas with thick cotton thread which is red, blue, black or white monochrome colored. Its motifs come from the nature: tulip, marjoram, poppy, apple and pear. 

I’ve found a nice Webpage which is about a Transylvanian village in Hungarian language, you could find further embroideries there: 
http://magyarvalko.mindenkilapja.hu/gallery/19739303/renderimages/17142475/kalotaszegi-irottas

So back on the subject of my Home Blessing. In my cousin’s farmhouse there are old and traditional furniture, stuff supplemented with some modern ones. So I did not choose a fancy and complicated embroidery, but based on a „blue-dyeing” (Hungarian „kékfestő”) cotton I made a relatively simple structured Home Blessing.

I embroidered the text with my sewing machine. It was the first time that I used it for that so I suffered a lot with it. But I didn’t give up and finally I finished with it, and it turned out to be just as I’ve imagined.

The „blue-dyeing” (Hungarian „kékfestő”) with blue and white color patterns are typically Hungarian cotton fabrics. Here are a few sites (the first one is English-written) about them.

http://www.blaudruckerei.hu/angol.htm

http://www.kekfestokovacs.hu

http://www.kekfestomuzeum.hu/a-muzeum

Have fun looking around!