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Globe

I'm happy to report that the globe project has come along swimmingly! Ok, ok, there have been a few hiccups, but let me walk you through the highlights:

Almost every time I sew something from a pattern, I end using the pattern as a guide, but adding my own flair and adjustments to make it my own; this project was no exception.

The first step was to make a sort of “globe form” out of canvas – similar to the idea of a pillow form you would put inside a decorative cover. So to make the form I followed the directions and cut out a series of small wedges.

I carefully sewed them together and got a hemisphere (the directions, of course, expected hand sewing – I cheated and used my machine. So much faster!) :

Sew the two hemispheres together and you've got a globe form. So cute!

With the base finished it was time to turn to the real work of making the decorative cover. To start, I cut the same size wedges out of the exterior fabric. The directions called for white silk (for the sake of historical accuracy, I assume), but I found some pretty blue dupioni silk at the fabric store and decided to go with that instead. But before I could sew the wedges together, I had to use a lightbox and a pencil to trace the shape of the landforms onto the silk.

Once I sewed the pieces together, all the pencil marks (miraculously) matched up and made up all the land masses. The next step was to embroider over all the lines.

Again, I differed from the color recommendations and went with a classic green = land color scheme.

Embroidering the globe was easy, though time consuming. I will admit a bit of a disaster struck when the seams of the silk starting pulling apart (it’s such a delicate fabric), so I had to pause and apply Fray Check to every seam. No pictures of that mess.

Once all the land was embroidered it was time to pop the canvas form inside the cover, sew it up, and tackle the latitude/longitude lines. By carefully measuring and placing pins as markers, I sewed the grid. The directions were surprisingly thorough, and even called for the Tropics of Cancer & Capricorn, the Arctic and Antarctic Circles, and the Ecliptic line.

The finished product – I love it!

I actually made two globes in slightly different color schemes. The one above has white latitude & longitude lines; I'm keeping that one for myself. This other one has a grey grid:

If you think it's as irresistibly adorable as I do, you can buy it here.

Back to School

Since I’m kicking this off in September, I thought it’d be fun to do a little back-to-school project to start things off. My heart flutters a bit thinking about how much I loved the beginning of each school year – new clothes, new teachers, new binders & notebooks to meticulously arrange(!). As my friend Carrie—a middle school teacher—recently said: Thirteen-year-old girls could teach captains of industry how to organize. So true.

Thought I still have a real temptation to buy a new binder and a book of stickers and conjure some back-to-school-magic, I came up with a better idea for my first project. I’m going to make a globe. A tiny, embroidered fabric globe.

The idea is not my own, it actually dates back over 200 years here in America. In the early 1800s globes weren’t cheap or easy to come by. But a little Quaker school in Pennsylvania was determined to teach geography and decided if they couldn’t afford to buy globes they would make them. So the female students were taught to sew globes.

Ruth Wright's globe sampler, 1815

I first saw one of these globes, dating from 1815, at the museum where I attended graduate school. I fell in love with it. First off, it’s adorable. And so lovingly made. But I also fell in love with it because at the time it was made, most girls weren’t taught geography and astronomy and all the other subjects the boys got to learn. But the girls who made these globes got to learn all that. I like that the globe represents the classic girlie activity of sewing with all the smarts of the boys layered on top. Little Quaker trailblazers.

My interest in the globe was a bit ironic…when I was about the age of the young Quaker girls making their globes, I remember being subjected to a battery of state testing in school; I scored in the 96-99^th percentile in literally every section except for map comprehension. There, I scored in the 40s. What a girl.

Back when I was doing the research on these globes I found a woman who actually wrote out all the directions on how to make your own. I’ve wanted to do it ever since, and now seems like the perfect time. And I’m much better at map comprehension these days so here’s to confidence that the continents will end up in the right hemispheres at the very least…

Once and Future Thing

So what are my real plans here? The world is not suffering for more blogs; I'm under no illusions that I'll be breaking new ground in this space. But I've come to realize that as hackneyed as the idea of starting a blog has become, it's actually a great forum for me to combine a lot of things I really enjoy (and things that, frankly, I'm quite good at) -- writing, creating, presenting...

The base for each post is going to be whatever creative project I’m currently working on (and perhaps looking back at ones I’ve already completed). I’ll share more of my story as the weeks go on, but for now suffice it to say that I’m a former Display Coordinator for Anthropologie, and during any given week might find me jumping from a jigsaw to a sewing machine, from paper mache to wiring lamps. I’ll share my projects, and the inspirations and stories behind them. The format and frequency of my posts will work themselves out as I get into the swing of things, but my initial plan is to post at least one project a week, more if time & energy allow.

As for the name…Once and Future Thing. I’m not a Renaissance Fair, amulet rings, and fantasy novels nerd, I promise. But it comes from the epitaph often applied to King Arthur: the once and future king. For me, the play on words is cute but the sentiment it conveys is even better. I take “once” things (be they raw materials or old objects) and use my creativity to create a new future for them. And while I wholeheartedly deny being an Arthurian legend nerd, I am a general history nerd, so I like the sense of history behind that idea as well.

So with that said, stay tuned for lots of future posts and future things…

Fire Yogurt

When I was 7, I wrote and illustrated a book. A short book, mind you. Crude illustrations. But I had a story to tell and a vision in my head and I felt the need to get it out. My family and I can still conjure hearty laughs at the subject: a character with a bright red beard named Fire Yogurt—I told many a story involving him.

A few years ago I found the book. Reading it was hilarious and heartwarming. I finally discovered how my little brain came up with his name: turns out his wife’s name was Frozen Yogurt. I must have thought “Fire” was a fitting opposite/companion.

His adventures are a roadmap of my 7 year old life: Fire Yogurt meets up with Injun Joe (my parents were reading me Tom Sawyer), Fire Yogurt moves to Puerto Rico (my dad is Puerto Rican and we had just visited there as a family for the first time), Fire Yogurt celebrates his 40th birthday (we had just celebrated my grandparents' 40th anniversary). I thought I was being unique in my storytelling, but it turns out I was just telling the story of my own life with some creative flair and colorful characters added in. And that's what I intend to do here.

I think my 7-year-old self was onto something: chronicling life, expressing it colorfully, creating something concrete as a memory. And so I think it's time to write the sequel to Fire Yogurt. I'll take the grammar and the illustrations up a notch, but I hope my childhood spirit will still reign supreme...

Puerto Rico. Illus. in Fire Yogurt (New Jersey, 1989), p. 8