"Phat Quarter Magic" Tip of the Day: Cash for Squares!

A great way to recycle old clothing items which are no longer repairable or "hand-me-downable" - for REAL CASH - is to cut them into very carefully, neatly arranged "Phat Squares".

"Phat Squares" are squares of cloth and material arranged in either colour ranging, or pattern ranging patterns in order to stimulate the creation of a quilt, clothing item, or pieced cloth art, using your careful arrangement of colours and patterns.

They are most often cut into 5"X5" or 6"X6" squares, for quilting projects, and into long strips, when using men's shirt, or blouse material, which require larger pieces.

Smaller fabric art works often use "phat square" collections, in conjunction with cut images, which are then carefully interwoven into the final, sewn fabric project, be it blanket, pillow, jacket, or complex and beautiful, visual fabric cloth multimedia art image, tastefully framed. "Puffy quilt" art can be painstaking and incredibly beautiful.

The best "Phat Square" bundles are tastefully tied with a lovely piece of ribbon, and priced as a purchasable item, with enough squares included to be able to complete an actual piece of work, and, depending upon the richness and complexity of the cloth, and the size of the suggested project, can range in price from $1.99, or less, to up to 15.00 apiece, for velvet, brocade, antique, and rare cloth.....and all from recycled "materials"!

You can use pinking shears (the big zig zag scissors), but always make sure that you measure very accurately and carefully, and that your scissors are VERY sharp, when creating "PHAT SQUARE" project bundles.

It is also a wonderful way to preserve that favourite clothing item which you associate with a loved moment in your life, a treasured and valuable antique piece of cloth just not big enough to make anything on its own, and unique combinations of patterns and colours, put together with an artist's eye, as well as a kind, encouraging heart. For extra "wonderfulness", tie a little label on it, with a suggested project! Everyone needs a little creative encouragement! ....

(i.e. doggie coat, little girl's quilted dress, cover for Grandma's motorcycle (grin), designer quilted evening jacket for that favourite entertainer, a beautiful and dressy, glamourously long "dress vest" for a favourite Auntie, to wear with blouse and skirt, or dress - or something as personal and practical as matching cushions, for the outside patio chairs!

The idea of a homemade gift made from Phat Squares dates back to New Orleans, (among other moments in history) when rich brocade fabrics and garments were often smuggled in, or given to the "Very Special Ladies" in the French Quarter as gifts, by the "well to do", and then made into incredibly beautiful, complex, and unique practical, and wearable objects. The tradition, however, is also rural, and is connected, in unique ways, to the "underground railway" which ran from the cotton plantations of slaves smuggled from Africa and the Far Islands, into Canada. Complex signals and directions were sewn into blankets and items months in advance of plans to smuggle slaves northward, and used to guide the "lookouts", who viewed them by day, using simple clothes and blankets, hanging on the line to dry!

Hidden people then travelled by night, to safety, and freedom in the North, using those same directions, based on painstaking and carefully arranged plans, by very, very good people........Another wonderful and practical piece of "Sewing Magic!"

Quiet comfort, and the ability to make a living in caring, healthy ways will never go out of style....and neither will "Phat Quarters".

Take a look at your closet, and see how much creativity - and cash! - is just waiting for your careful and neat cutting, arranging, bundling and labelling.

God Bless, and Good Luck, should you accept this "Create with Love" mission!

Love,


Madame George xo

The Heart Of a King in Pearl Roundabout

What excellent news, that scholarship, internationally, produces a poet and scholar concerned with the welfare of the very people whose toil produced the concern itself.

What a joy, surely, that "The Heart of a King" would write - with wit and wisdom far beyond her years - of that same heart, in a man who would call Himself One....

Seems a truly high compliment, on both counts - even if there is a little talk of "A compassionate Devil in disguise". He did run a pretty close second.....smile.

Or, in this case, walk....with many, many others, as I recall......he and his Dream.

RELIEF: A moment with Santa

http://www.cbc.ca/22 minutes/

View, particularly, if you would, "Santa Critch on Parliament Hill."

It's my personal favourite.

Love amongst the Ruins

'If, as Martin Luther King wrote, "a riot is the language of the unheard", a result of "living with the daily ugliness of slum life, educational castration and economic exploitation", then this is Dr King's language rendered as art, and set to music.'

Dan Hancox, u.k guardian.

Quincy Jones said it best, in "Back on the Block."

"Back on the block, heebopa hip hop, soul, rhythm and blues"....
"I'm on the wax, I'm on the stage; I'm on the screen; I'm on the news"....
...."on a magical journey;"...
..."I'm on the scene, just like an attorney." Voices, everywhere: Death?

Nowhere, man.

Part 14: Lip Lock

The explosion ripped through the two storage tanks like two huge opening eyes, in the darkness.

Grant, standing with the phone in his hand, watched the glow in the night sky, and knew he was near. Cement shard in one hand, phone in the other, he stood there, the glow reflected in his own eyes.

Turning, impossibly, he watched "Love, Magic, Learning", flash in Neon on the side of a building. A tube of lipstick, held in a delicately manicured hand, appeared, rising like a torch, the hand bending down like a snake, towards an upturned, elegant face, which turned to look at him kindly.

"Do me", she said, calmly. "I look better painted."

The screen closed, impossibly, to a head and shoulders of a Robert-Palmer styled, sleekly cut, Mona Lisa look alike.

Grant blinked, twice.

"Jesus", he said. "I can smell you, you freak show."

In the near distance, the siren wailed towards him.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Midday

The afternoon is sizzling.
I can see the shimmer bouncing off of the wood, warning me with wavering lips
Of the challenge of afternoon settees.....

I note the cushion appears buoyant enough, springing back from my touch like a
Cursor test;
Airdried barbecues, summer sweat, and assisted breathing
Aside.

Oh, droll night, that looms nearer,
Bid the lace curtain draw aside its twinkle
To show us languor,
Wheeling.

In need of rest, the shadowed dancing within
is strangely silent,
Smiling at the shimmer,
Teeth flashing,
in a slow, sultry
Two step.

The Swing

Magnolia sweet air, hanging fragrant and languid around our heads,
Tell him a story of my thoughts;
Of the small droplet of water, wending its way beneath the cotton
Swell of summer's haze,
Reminding us of
Thirst.

The other Life of Bees

If there is a road through all of these stars,
And what seems glow and beckon really is,
Then journeying there can only be a blink and blip on someone's radar screen,
When the little movement that is us displaces calm,
Deep within some Nebula,
Replacing void with ripple, and wrinkle in Time.

There will be this errant bee, carrying us, and we, the
Honey of Life, bringing sweetness
to some
Distant Flower, and the various
Lives,
Lit upon its Petals.

Tempered Nectar

I think of glen and dale, dark and
sweet as claret balm,
Swirled and stained from your lips, and spilled onto mine, like
dye.


I can taste the slow oak of
age, pungent as forest sweat,
in the din and mist of spring,
Its languid tongue, grape-touched and tingling,
Meeting mine, softly.

In the dark, the lips that part and join,
hide the quick soft sigh
of
New nectar.

Self Portrait by Dawn M. Nevills

If I am but a canvas, upon which life ekes out its etchings,
Then I should like the map, like the lines,
To show that love has played itself out upon my Face;
That each event - whether in Sorrow or Joy - has left its mark,
Its Moment, and its Meaning;
I should like a bit of the wild colours in God's sky to
Show themselves, in Morning and Evening,
When yawning sunlight's watering tendril fingers,
And evening glows' sleepy embers suggest
Brief Times, during which my eyes have beheld them;
And I should like a Man, when he sees these maps of life
on my face, and on my body, not to see decay,
But the gentle passage of Time, and, in the changes
which mark each passing year,
A different kind of
Beauty.

Vulcanic Tantrum

See the rock and steam of upheaval,
Ridding itself of itself, upon the steadied
Bosom of rock and traversed petrified field!

They slide down the sharpened, impossible peaks of
Outburst,
into the
Blackened, crawling sludge-river of fire and fresco.

All are rock to rock, nudged and nuanced
Into fossilized frenzy.

Trees in Fog

There is no echo here, in this grotto.
The fog, like errant fireside smoke,
shrouds and silences, reminding the looming dark shadows of intrusion, that theirs is a momentary presence, controlled and blanketed, still, by Nature's Gray.
Sentinel trunks, stretching upwards into the vapoured gloom, bid oblivion skyward,
And the still, small trickle of mesmerized water, wending its way carefully
through the mire, is
A mere memory of spring abandon, which, nymphlike,
Splashes stretching fragrant blooms with every
Newness.
Their absence, and that of the sun-dappled hillside, are
strangely noted.

Dragon Breath on Morning Water

At long last, like August light, Faulkner's mention bemoaning end,
The lake's clear glass surface showed breath upon it,
Wrinkling suddenly, as if, after sighing,
Some unseen hand smoothed it out, carefully, like a coverlet for fish,
and
The long stringing lace of lake bottom greens.

Rolling forth, sheen glimmer blinked amongst the folds,
Reflecting shine eyes, appearing and disappearing,
Like gigantic fireflies
Displaced, and drowned, yet preserved under glass, amidst the waves.

Docking Indigo

When the indigo ink of the evening flows out across a sky bleeding into soft whispers and gleaming glimpses,
The stars shall, with clear, pointed angle fingers, lead the small, spare whisps of words
Escaping between lips - between us, lightening quiet -
And capture them, like quick hands, to breathe them back, softly, in
Etched echoes of sparkle, sprinkled without care, across an endless, undulating canvas.
I shall catch the quick breath against my mouth, as your lips move softer than a feather, across mine, in an almost-kiss,
And disturb the wheeling moon, in its winding arc, as it bounces beneath clouds, dodging the dark side of itself in earnest moves, like a chess piece seeking to show its face, in a mate-move, all the while
Gliding like a sudden, shooting shower of meet or might
Upon which we wish, and linger,
And love, languidly.
....oh, languidly, like
Your sangria tongue against my ear, mapping the invisible baton and slow turn of
Step, and circle, as it is mirrored and measured, in the sway and sigh that is the
Matched-more-precision whirl of
Planet We.

Pillow wok

If, in this pale liquid sunlight finger, I draw your smile as it is now,
Murmuring softly against my ear, amidst this pillow,
Then there shall be a burst of warmth
Forever embroider-emblazoned on these white plains of
Weaving,
And even when my eyes close - be it death or pause (for little death is not so,
And in play and patter all bears thinking and doing, to say we did)-
The beacon of your eyes will blink and wink and
Crinkle wrinkle
Against my chilled
nose.

Jar Saids

Steak,sangria,sanguine and sultry somnambulance, soothing and song filled - sashay in summer, seeking;

All these appetites, controlled like a chilled cellar,
Shielding my sleepy need from the soul-destroy stripes of
Forget's
Seasonal disorder, stifling and cloth-choked, stuffed brutally, finally, punishingly on to
Shelves filled with stolen thought, quick kiss, and quiet sigh, preserved.
I see my eyes peering out of the caged and caught glimpses there, unpainted.

You are spring, and speak, and sap, this late summer,
Rising through roots clinging deep and early to the sleep of
Neglected now,
Breathing surely, strangely, softly,
Towards the honey hum of
Need.