Which brings me to my recent puffs craze. While finishing off the backs of the latest orange, red and pink puffs, I’m continuing exploratory sample making, as shown in several previous posts:

I have several metres of waxed polyester thread/cords in appropriate toning colours that I’d like to loop about and have hanging down, but wandering stings of glass beads are a thing I like at the moment, too, as they add to the organic look. Yesterday I found some vibrant pink rattail cord and some waxed polyester ones (dull almost burnt orange, hot pink and a rich red) so I’ll be adding something else 3D to this piece – strings of beads, wisps of organza or looped and hanging threads, and maybe all three… and just as I’ve done for the others, I’ll finish it with hanging loops on the back or mount it on an artist canvas, giving the choice to display it horizontally or vertically.

I see Landscape as a metaphor for a Life, in which a road or path crossing it symbolises directions taken due to decisons made, actions taken, and obstacles overcome.

The eternal cycle of erosion by wind, water and temperature change acting on the earth’s surface wears gradually landform material down into rocks and finer particles, and transports that away to deposit it somewhere else. Day by day, over time mountains are steadily worn down, cliffs crack and eventually crumble, rivers carve valleys across flood plains, glaciers grind away valley rock walls leaving mounds of material as they retreat, and waves wash sand back and forth along coasts by way of tidal rhythms and ocean currents, so that beach shapes and profiles are always changing. If we step onto it for a daily walk, our local beach looks much the same until an extremely high tide or unusually strong waves arrive. In a violent storm like the recent hurricane Melissa in the Caribbean, both erosion and deposition by wind and water were massive and rapid, so the devastating results were immediately obvious after the storm cleared. And of course, seismic activities including earthquakes and volcano eruptions bring dramatic and sudden change.

In a Life, the normal processes of birth and growth to maturity followed by death normally bring signs of gradual aging that we don’t notice every day if we’re with someone frquently; we do notice them at family events, meeting up with an old school friend, or looking back through the photo albums. And in Life, too, major events like births, deaths, marriages, divorce, serious medical events, a big lottery win, an outbreak of war, a housefire and more, can produce noticeable changes in a person’s appearance and personality.

Gradual and sudden events shape the future appearances of both Landscapes and Lives.

For some time I’ve realised that every time in my life I’ve had a major geographical relocation due to geologist husband Mike’s job, some kind of change has appeared in my art, and there are several clear periods of identifiable changes:

• In 1969 we married and moved from our home state to Western Australia where the nickel exploration and mining boom was underway. The sewing, knitting and crochet I did in those years was dominated by household sewing and garment making for the little Schwabes who arrived in this time.
• In 1975 we relocated to Darwin and the Northern Territory. During our first Wet Season up there, a new friend suggested reciprocal childminding for her to attend a weekly craft class, offering to mind our two in return, as it was important to get ourselves out of the house doing some activity to stave off Wet Season blues, so I enrolled for a class in Creative Embroidery which changed my life, and soon I was self identifying as a creative embroiderer, and began exhibiting.
• In late 1987 Mike was transferred to Denver USA. I joined the Embroiderers Guild of America, learned traditional American patchwork and quilting, but by 1991 was designing and exhibiting original quilted textile art – widely known as art quilts, see www.saqa.com which I continued as we returned to Australia in 1995.
• 1998 onwards – Still making and exibiting art quilts, Mike an a colleague began a project here, and I commuted Australia to Uruguay several times a year until in 2000, when for economic reasons I decided to stay here until ‘the job’ was done – long story; and I became an accidental immigrant.
• Since 2019 I’ve used more hand stitch, increasingly so since the pandemic, returning to my creative embroidery knowledge and experience with fresh eyes. I took a few online workshops during the pandemic and affiliated with SAQA’s 3D Special Interest Group. Besides exhibiting internationally, I’ve been participating in juried group shows here in Uruguay, but an upcoming solo exhibition in January ’26, Casa de la Cultura, Maldonado UY, Jan 2 – 27, will be my first solo show here since 2009, a long gap partly due to some major life events, c’est la vie 😉 !!!

Although I don’t remember who said it or wrote it, I encountered this idea decades ago, and it has become an important mantra that I have been known to declare at suitable times, even muttering it under my breath when tidying up after something creative, ranging from the kitchen to my sewing room. It’s very affirming, and sometimes soothing.

Some people call this kind of thing play and in an exploratory sense it is. This stretchy gold metallic polyester fabric, of a very fine knit coated on one wide with a metallic finish has intrigued me since I bought it early this year and explored it’s handling propertlies. – I just re-read that article, and had forgotten what I discovered about ironing it without melting it.

As my regular readers know, I’ve used it in various 2D and 3D creations this year. It’s wonderful in raw edge applique and makes fabulous stuffed puffs.

Another property I’ve found interesting is that it in small pieces it’s not ‘floppy’, so it has some potential as an edging. This morning’s samples as in the above photo might look like floor sweepings on their way to the bin, but I learned a great deal more about this stuff in a couple of hours’ play, and I see a lot to remember and think about.

I’m working on more stuffed puffs, black this time in black, for another tabletop soft sculpture piece for my upcoming January exhibition. Early this year I found an interesting new fabric in a polyester with pewter metallic finish, played around with it and next day returned to buy more and some of the gold it also comes in. It’s great for appliqued shapes, and a little goes a long way. I found some Gutermann thread on a 500m cone that exactly matches it, and here’s how I’m using it at the moment. I think slightly curved lines will look lovely once all the embellished puffs are assembled together.

To say spiders cause me discomfort is a massive understatement, and I have been known to totally lose it in the presence of large creepy hairy ones. I know, spiders are our friends, but they can go and be friends in someone else’s house and garden, as far as I’m concerned. Even out in the garden, some of them are a worry to me, as from now on (October) through to late April they spin large webs at the end of the day to trap insects flying through the night. Of course, I’m happy for them to do that, BUT when I walk into one of their webs, well, it’s not a pretty sight. Last year there was one living somewhere outside the window beside my computer, and he wisely set his web between some hanging plants out there. It’s a great spot, close to one of the lights on the patio. I watched a couple of times when it was about to rain, he rolled up his web and parked himself on the underside of one of the beams across the patio where it joined onto the house – mission completed just seconds before it began raining. They’re so clever to be able to read the changing conditions. However, it’s our patio, our outdoor living area for much of the year, and when necessary I wield a broom before sitting down out there.

As I reviewed this first embroidered puff, I knew it reminded me of a spider pic I’d seen somewhere a few years ago, and at last this morning, after a search through my photos and my IG posts, I found the image that was on my mind.

It’s a Peruvian Nose Ornament With Spiders in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, presumed Salinar culture and estimated age 200 BCE-300CE. I noticed at the bottom of the page it’s available for any use including commercial, so here we are. If you’re interested in archaeology as I am, go to the link.

My regular readers might remember my recent post in August titled Occasional 3D Works which linked back to an article on memory in art, and how earliest childhood drawings of people tend to be ultra simplified blobs of head-bodies with protruding sticks as limbs, in the style known as ‘tadpole people’…

As the child grows they become more complex with the addition of facial features, the separation of body and head, hair, clothes and so on. Of course my own earliest drawings in 1949 or 1950 have long since disappeared, and I’m sure we don’t have any of our children’s or grandchildren’s, either. Parents tend to keep such things stuck up on the ‘frig for a couple of years, gradually replacing them with more sophisticated artworks featuring more increasingly realistic drawings of the artists themselves standing with other family members, the family’s house, dog or cat, grandma etc. I’ve never been one of those super organised collector types who file that stuff away organised into years, probably for the scrap book for each of their kids for their 21st birthdays, or something like that. We’ve also moved a number times since our offsprings were in kindy and preschool, and I guess that’s worked against us becoming the hoarders we might have become if we’d remained in the one place all our married lives. It’s partly to compensate for this shocking neglect that I began writing my other blog, pickledgizzards.com

That post Occasional 3D Works ended with the thought that since these were on my mind, I really should try a tadpole person or two in 3D, and this morning I took that bull by the horns. This very satisfying result is a first prototype – a wall grouping? Installation? Tabletop? as there will be more. This has a lot of potential.

I learned a lot by making this –

• It was easier and faster than I somehow expected.
• I found plenty of suitable wire in my studio that had been sitting there for years.
• I have heaps of interesting suitable bits of fabric, so here’s another potential stash buster.
• The strips of fabric wound around the ‘limbs’ starting from the feet and hand ends frayed fast with handling, so I’ll try cutting on the cross, or a rouleau tube, or wrap with thread.
• Even when packed lightly inside the polyesterfibre filling in a 5cm x 8cm blob doesn’t need further stiffening inside (so I didn’t need to cut that shape out of an old Xray sheet)

I will now retire with another cup of tea for a good read out on the patio of my current ‘downstairs book’ “A Hundred Sweet Promises” by Sephir Haddad My ‘upstairs book’ (beside my bed) is “Autocracy, Inc.” by Anne Applebaum which I’m reading on my kindle. My upstairs/downstairs system is just easier than remembering to cart the one book up and down!