I haven’t sewn anything in nearly a month, and it has been delicious. Really. No buttonholes, no hems, no seams. Nothing! I ripped a button off my winter coat and pocketed it, people. I didn’t sew it back on. That’s cold turkey.
But spring beckons, or so I’m told it will, eventually, and the sewing must start again. There are many, many things I want to make and several I need to make. Wants and needs…and more meditation.
I’ve been watching the Historical Sew Fortnightly that The Dreamstress is running, and I’m in. What the heck! I need another kick in the pants, breeches, what-have-you, to get back to sewing. I really do enjoy it, so why not?
To start with something simple due by midnight? Hmm. I have at least two ideas already, but one garment under construction might allow me to meet the deadline. Well, the North American midnight, anyway. I’ll have to cheat to start, and that isn’t usually the Calash way…
Looking ahead, I see a possible 1813 garment in my future. How about this 1813 Winter Walking Dress? I could make it just for fun, which would be a good task for me.
Family’s here (OK, my mother; we’re a small family) and it’s time to pay attention to the people in the room instead of writing. So to celebrate winter, and the shorter days (tell that to a child waiting for Christmas), here’s one of my favorite paintings by Rhode Island native Gilbert Stuart.
I am so going to catalog our carved squirrel, just so I can add squirrels to the subject headings. Look, pages of squirrel subject headings! “Squirrel Bait–Musical Group.” The Library of Congress makes everything so–logical. Safe. Controlled.
At the Brandywine River Museum, I saw an Asher B. Durand landscape and said, “I haven’t thought about Asher Durand in a long time.” My mother, ever the realist, muttered just-loud-enough, “Well, why would you?!” She studied art history for real, me, I only went to art school. It’s a wonder I can even feed myself.
Getting my stimulating-image fix last night on Pinterest: lo and behold, Asher B. Durand! Buddy! Good to see you! Even better, the side of Asher Durand you never get in those American Art History classes taught by a disheartened adjunct on a three-year contract trying to beat Manifest Destiny into you.
Thanks to Cassidy, Mrs. Winfield Scott gazed calmly from the screen last night, lovely in her golden silk gown with fine silk over sleeves not even as heavy as butterfly wings. Lovely Mrs. Scott, against a backdrop of a…finely painted river scene, highly detailed and with a looming cloud… That painter guy seems to know what he’s doing, why, Asher B. Durand, you scamp! You worked landscape magic into the background of that money-making, pay-the-bills portrait.
Grey Collection-Summer Afternoon
Cows won’t pay for portraits of themselves, so the history and landscape painters of the past generally had to shill the portraits (G.C. Bingham did it, but without Asher B’s grace). Lucky for us, they were good at people, too, though I think you can tell their first love is landscape.
So while Pinterest can be home to horrors (go see for yourself, I’m not looking), it can lead you to places you didn’t expect to go, or back to things you’d forgotten about, like Asher B. Durand. He was useful to know about when I worked in the Midwest, photo editing a history journal. I’m glad I’ve met him again.
Kirsten Hammerstrom 
You must be logged in to post a comment.