offcntr | Feb. 15th, 2026

Feb. 15th, 2026

Stopped at the St. Vinnie's off River Road with Denise, looking for fabric for her bookbinding class. Since JoAnn went belly-up, there's no good fabric store nearby (that isn't Hobby Lobby. feh.), but you can occasionally find bits and scraps in the thrift stores. While she was going through the bins of fat quarters, I perused the end caps.

And found a friend.

This is a bulb forcer, for getting narcissus bulbs to bloom in winter. I have one much like it in my cupboard at home. It's by my late friend, Kathy Lee.

Had a pretty successful firing, even top and bottom, very little oxidation, mostly on the very bottom by the door. I had a little over-reduction up top, could ask for a little less brown, but over all, very successful. Here are some serving bowls, just out of the kiln.

And a few of the many special orders.

Yes, I know, I said I wouldn't make spoon rests again. It was a long-time customer, and she dropped her old one...

Every year, for romantic holidays--Valentine's, our anniversary--Denise and I celebrate by doing an art project. This year, since she's been taking a fabric book class at Maude Kerns Art Center, I'd dug out all my remaining fabric scraps, what didn't get used in my pandemic quilt project (still unfinished, I'm afraid). Which gave me an idea.

I've been following an artist named Ann Smith on Instagram almost since I started my account there, I think she was one of the first suggested posts that popped up in my feed. She does fabric art as persimmonstudioart, hand-stitched patchwork pictures of birds. She gets some amazing effects with layering different patterns of fabric, even suggesting iridescence on grackles and starlings. It's gorgeous work.

So we decided to do a bit of birding ourselves. I pre-sewed background panels on my machine, six by nine inches, found and printed some reference photos--Denise picked a robin, I, a goldfinch. Then we chose and ironed our fabric scraps, transferred patterns for different color sections to scrap paper with carbon paper. (I'm amazed at the stuff Denise has stashed away; there are advantages to being in a borderline hoarding relationship.)

Cut out pieces, aligned them on the reference photo. Many of them were too small to pin, so we scotch-taped them together to transfer to the backgrounds, roughly stitched them down with some of the many different colors of thread Denise has for bookbinding.