More from my first week at Catoctin Mountain National Park

(Above:  Me ... earlier this morning at the Blue Ridge Summit Vista in Catoctin Mountain National Park, Maryland.  Click on any image to enlarge.)

So far, so good with my daily plan for this amazing art residency at Catoctin Mountain National Park.  Every day this past week, I've hiked one of the woodsy trails in the morning.  Afternoons are spent stitching a large stash of zigzag stitched cording into fiber vessels.  Evenings are spent on my contribution to the Park's permanent art collection, a crazy quilt that was started by some anonymous woman back in the 1890s and is now being finished by me!  (I'll be writing about this in my next blog post!  After all, I will be demonstrating hand embroidery on this crazy quilt this Saturday and Sunday from 2-4 at the Thurmont Regional Library.  I hope to get a few more images at that time!)

 

(Above:  A double stone wall along the trail to Cunningham Falls ... which is actually in the Maryland State Park Service but the trails are interconnected.)

I've hiked at least six miles every morning this week.  The trails are graded as "easy" and "moderate" but I've found all of them rather straight forward and more like a walk in the woods.  It is really super green and very, very pretty here.  Because I'm out during the weekdays, I've had almost every inch or every trail all to myself and the nature around me.  I've seen a couple white-tailed deer and a rabbit.  Thankfully, I have not encountered a brown bear.  They live here but I really don't need to see one in the wild!

 

(Above: The fiber vessels made in my first week!)

My afternoons are going very well too!  So far, I've stitched up all the fiber vessels in the photo above.  Not bad for one week!  These are headed to the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show, November 11 - 13 but will also be added to my sales platform as soon as I get home! 

(Above:  Step one!)

Every time I post my fiber vessels here on my blog or on a social media platform, I get asked about the construction method.  A common question is, "Do you use rope in the cording?"  Well ... no I do not!  My cording is made entirely from strands of yarn over which I zigzag stitch.  All the yarn and even the thread was sourced from yard sales, thrift shops, auctions, and as donations from other people.  I spent a week outside Pickens, South Carolina just zigzag stitching my enormous stash of yarn into cording ... for the expressed purpose of creating the fiber vessels here at Catoctin Mountain NP.  (I blogged about the cording HERE.) So ... here's a little step-by-step tutorial of how I'm now transforming the cording into a fiber vessel.  I start with a very small coil of cording ... as seen in the image above.

Step 2:  I zigzag the little coil and just keep on zigzag stitching ... around and around ... until I come to the edge of my sewing machine.  At this point, I use the palm of my hand to continue the circular motion ... which causes the coil to start curling.

 

Step 3 is pretty much the same as step 2 ... just keep on zigzag stitching ... around and around ... using the palm of your hand and your fingers to keep the "bowl" moving and growing. 

 

Step 4 is pretty much the same as step 2 and 3 ... just keep on zigzag stitching ... around and around ... until you like the shape and think the vessel is finished. 

 

Step 5:  Cut the cording with what would probably make another pass around the rim.  Unpick the zigzag stitching of this remaining bit of cording.  Now ... cut the individual strands of yarn to different lengths ... so that the final pass is tapered to s smooth rim.

 

 

Step 6:  Twist the individual strands and zigzag stitch them to the rim of the fiber vessel.  As you zigzag stitch around, the twisting becomes almost unnecessary as the strands of yarn are fewer and fewer.  For this fiber, I switched both the bobbin and top thread to a burgundy colored thread ... so that the rim was a different color.  I generally stitch the rim twice before removing the vessel from the machine.  Any "ends" of the strands that are sticking up are cut off.  Then, I stitch around the rim with a very dense zigzag stitch.

 

(Above:  The finished fiber vessel.)

So ... that's how I'm spending my afternoon.  Being in this chestnut log cabin makes this even better.  I have a view to the woods and am serenaded by birds.  Below are some of the photos I've taken recently.

(Above:  Stone cairns ... which aren't generally something that National Park's encourage ... so I didn't build one, just took the picture!)

(Above:  The collier's hut along the Charcoal Trail.  A collier is the term given to those working in the coal industry, but before coal was used in iron furnaces, charcoal was used. In the mid-19th century, the Catoctin Mountain had more than one hundred charcoal making hearths to supply the nearby iron furnace in the production of pig iron.)

(Above:  Lichen ... one could spend all day snapping photos of lichen here!)

(Above:  Two views to a mushroom)

(Above:  View from Hog Rock Vista.)

(Above:  The underside of an uprooted tree.)

(Above:  One of fortunately very few trees with cut graffiti.)

(Above:  Two feathers ... that were near the remains of a bird wing.  No!  I did NOT pick them up!  Generally, it is illegal to collect the feathers of migratory and birds of prey.)