art swap

Last month, I took part in a Laura Ingalls Wilder blog-a-thon and art swap sponsored Quill Cottage. Thanks so much for organizing this, Miss Sandy, and for letting a non-craft-regular participate.

I realized early on that I probably shouldn't have signed up for a month-long anything when I was going to be out of town for two of those four weeks. As a result, I didn't have as much time or energy to devote to the art projects as I'd have liked, and I never even blogged about two of the topics. I also found that I didn't have as much time for research as usual, and that was pretty painful.

Another thing I realized is that I have very definite craft ideas about Laura Ingalls Wilder and "Little House" and me, and about being creative in general. In my mind, it was more about Laura and less about the crafting, and I am willing to bet that others didn't see it that way. I'm not at all fond of coordinated and pre-packaged papers, trim, borders, letters, or anything you can purchase at a craft store or see in a craft magazine. I tend to want to do everything from scratch and I definitely obsess. I've been working on both a LIW scrapbook and a log cabin dollhouse for a while now, and the going is slow when you want to use a bit of lace but find yourself knitting it first, and only after finding a pattern from the 1860s.

Anyway, I thought I'd share the art swap projects I did and explain a bit of what each contains in the way of LIW imagery.



WEEK ONE: Embellished quilt square; click HERE for biggie view. -- This took me a really long time to get into, partly because I didn't like the color choices on the old quilt square I was provided with. It was a ninepatch tied with red floss, featuring a green/brown plaid and a blue/white leaf print. I never would have paired these two together! The first thing I did was to tea-dye the square, hoping to tone down the white (it didn't help much). I contemplated using a piece from an old quilt of my own, but in the end I just decided to cover up as much of that sucker as possible, which was the general idea anyway.

Most of the bottom third is a pocket trimmed in netted lace and plaid ribbon. I made a little 3-inch tall ragdoll for one side, and also stuck in some wheat grown on the Ingalls homestead. I also made a little autograph album, complete with some entries scanned and copied from Laura Ingalls' own album (that's Ida Wright's entry shown in the picture). Also tucked in the pocket are some miniature pages of the LIW manuscript for Little House in the Big Woods ("Once upon a time, long ago..."). Above the pocket on the left is another pocket (crocheted) with a fabric Laura Ingalls photo sewed on. It contains some namecards, including mine, Almanzo's, and one in New York Point that I made. There's also a soapstone slate pencil tucked in there.

The top part of the piece has a big wooden button, a small slate, and a brass skeleton key (I was thinking about the key to the schoolhouse that Clyde Perry gave Laura in These Happy Golden Years). I made a bear claw / dove-in-the-window square for the upper right. Hanging in front are some prairie roses and two (shrink plastic) "candy" hearts with the sayings from Little House in the Big Woods. The hanger at the top is a twig from one of Pa's cottonwoods, tied on with bits of leather.



WEEK TWO: Hang-tags. We were provided with some buttons, paper LIW images, several pages from a "Little House" book (mine was On the Banks of Plum Creek), plus three manila "luggage" tags. I think this was the project that made me realize that - to me - Laura Ingalls plus art do not equal "fussy Victorian." (Yes, I know Laura made a Victorian crazy-quilt at some point in her life.) This was the first project I did, and I looked at those blank tags and book pages and all I could think of was weaving strips of text or somehow turning them into a log cabin. I actually loved keeping a more monochromatic color scheme.

Some of the things I added were part of an "I love Laura Ingalls Wilder" pin, lace, ribbon, and bits of hay. I used all my own buttons here, including one made from a cottonwood branch. For a biggie view, click HERE.



WEEK THREE: Recipe card. We were provided with a couple of blank recipe cards, an 8-inch square sheet protector with black paper, and some cookbook pages. I ended up using my own stuff for this, and I used one of Caroline Ingalls' recipes rather than one of my own. The recipe is for "Mixed Pickles" and was published in the 1914 Cream City Cook Book, published in De Smet by the Aid Society of the Congregational Church. The cookbook also contains recipes by Mrs. Loftus, Mrs. Power, Mrs. Boast, and others.

I used a gold/red handmade paper for the base. I printed the recipe in brown ink, and added wooden buttons and a couple of "gardening" illustrations from Little House on the Prairie. The photos are of Laura and Ma. At the top are some paper seed packets I made; they represent the tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, and onions used in the pickle recipe. There's also a mason jar drawing (on acetate, so it's clear) tucked in with them.

At the left is a little ribbon bag containing the spices mentioned in the recipe: cinnamon, cloves, ginger, allspice, mustard seed, and celery seed. I toyed with the idea of adding circles of spices glued onto wooden disks but I couldn't make it fit. At the bottom left is something Pa says in Little House on the Prairie about "living like kings."

After deciding to use one of Ma's recipes, I realized that there simply aren't all that many gardening references in the (non Farmer Boy) "Little House" books!! Click /HERE for biggie view.



WEEK FOUR: Cover for notebook of inspirational music / quotes from Laura Ingalls Wilder and the "Little House" books. We were given a little booklet of pages made out of old music, and were to make a cover for it, and also to use the pages for our own inspirational messages.

I could have really gussied this one up, but I kept it simple. The cover is plain padded gingham cotton with a crocheted pocket (I seem to have a thing for pockets...). Into the little triangle, I tucked a couple of LIW sayings. The book closes with a crocheted loop and pearl button. I included a ribbon bookmark.


I know that Laura herself used old books and glued recipes and interesting clippings into them for safe-keeping, and that's sort of the idea here. If it's one thing I don't lack for, it's favorite LIW sayings. I've made kept lists, booklets of sayings, a card index file, and I even made a perpetual calendar with my favorite "Little House" illustrations and quotations.

So, on the sheet music pages, I glued pages of quotations and favorite lines from "Little House" books and songs. I sprinkled it with Garth Williams illustrations. I also tucked in some memorabilia because I could imagine Laura doing just that - a violet, a leaf from one of Pa's cottonwoods, a Sunday School card, a few photographs. The first page is handmade paper containing leaves and flower petals; I sewed on another bit of paper and another picture of LIW on muslin.

My next project will be to clean up the crafting mess made while working on this project!
- posted by pioneergirl at 2:36 PM