A Season of Exploring, Playing and Making

Collage of Projects Completed This Summer and a Book Read

The past few months, I’ve spent a fair amount of time exploring, playing and making. Not venturing far on most days, at least not physically.

It was a beautiful, long-lasting spring here in Northern Illinois this year – mild temps in the day, cool nights, rain at (mostly) the right times and in the right amounts. Magnolia trees actually held their blossoms for an extended period. Beautiful. Would we slide into a summer that was just as perfect?

With the start of fall, we now know the summer has been a challenging one: drought conditions in many parts of the country and devastating rainfall elsewhere are reminders of a changing climate; continued health worries with the delta variant…

With all that is going on out in the world and, perhaps, close to home in our daily lives, a creative practice for expressing where you’re at in all of this can give shape to your thoughts, ideas, solutions… In other words, a creative practice can act as an elixir of sorts that provides much-needed breathing space for processing and making/doing.

Key to my creative practice is making time to explore and play. Over the last few months, here’s where the journey has taken me…

Reading

Escaping into books is something I’ve done since childhood. This summer, I closed each day with reading in bed for a bit. Not light summer reading mind you. Instead, I went for some pretty intense stories that covered all the emotions but at the end of the day, shine a light on that which is most important and serve as a reminder to live into each day fully. Two favorites – Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad and Finding Freedom: A Cook’s Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch by Erin French. Find both at your local library or independent bookstore. I am currently reading Pastoral Song: A Farmers Journey by James Rebanks.

Knitting

For some reason, I love to knit in the summer – and, not light airy things. More like wool knits to use in the coming winter months. Last summer, I knit up a half-dozen scarves or so for Christmas gifts. Continuing on my mission to clear out my yarn stash, this year I tackled a sweater pattern. I look at the finished piece now with amazement – because I actually knit a whole sweater and finished it! (Many thanks to my wonderful, talented neighbor who had a lot of patience!) Using a simple pattern and focusing on each piece at a time kept it fun (for the most part), rather than overwhelming. I chose a classic sweater design (“Great Tunics,” View 2) from 25 Gorgeous Sweaters for the Brand New Knitter by Catherine Ham. Find it a the library or used on Amazon or at yard sales.

Quilting

A trip to the Art Institute of Chicago was all about finding inspiration. First stop was the Bisa Butler exhibit, “Bisa Butler: Portraits.” The quilts were breathtaking and the story behind each one a glimpse into Black life. This field trip also made me realize just how much I have missed going to museums during the pandemic.

Dyeing with Plants and Embroidery

I took an online steam-dyeing class from the folks at Lady Farmer. After the class, I spent a few evenings embellishing the project with embroidery. Since then, I’ve dyed small amounts of fabric using kitchen scraps and plants from our yard. So cool!

Cooking

No doubt about it, by late spring, we had fallen into a menu rut at our house, cycling through the same recipes each week. With summer, we had to change things up to take advantage of the vegetables coming out of our very small garden and the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) box arriving each week. I dug into cookbooks and began experimenting with new recipes. One favorite book – Food52 Mighty Salads: 60 New Ways to Turn Salad into Dinner. A favorite soup recipe (that we modified based on what was on hand – like substituting spinach for the chard) – was this Moroccan Red Lentil Soup with Chard from the Feed Me Phoebe blog.

Gardening

At this point in the season, I’ve come to terms with the fact that the yard is what it is. My focus has shifted to laying out plans for next year. Plans that include expanding the garden to – hopefully – get rid of the lawn (and the lawn mower) within the next couple of years. My preliminary sketches on graph paper look somewhat like a quilt design!

Mapping Out Places to Explore in the Coming Months

Making time for exploring and playing, in my opinion, is just as important as time spent making. Map out your own path for exploring and playing in the months ahead. Your map can take many forms but ideally reflects where you are at right now. Young kids? Break habits and visit a new park or walk down a different street. Not feeling a 100%? How are the trees outside your window changing right now? What else do you notice this time of year? Work dominates life right now? Find a good book to really sink into, or take a few minutes to explore a favorite museum’s online collection. Yes, in person is more fun, but sometimes it’s just not possible.

Follow your interests to explore and play. Then, when the time is right, take all this inspiration into your studio* and make/do. Make beauty. Do good.

*The word “studio” is used to mean wherever you go to make all those ideas. A place where the energy shifts for a bit of time as you sink into a project and others (ideally) recognize that you are “in the zone.” For many years mine was borrowed space in a small room that also functioned as homework space and home office. When I lived in a studio apartment in Chicago, it was the breakfast bar that divided the kitchen from the living/sleeping area.

Easing into Spring and Planning a Dye Garden

Flower seed packets

With more daylight and warmer temps, I am ready to get out in the yard to do spring clean up and begin putting in place all the garden ideas I’ve dreamed up over winter. Here in the Midwest, though, we often slip back into winter for a day here and there in March and April. Like the last few days. So, I’m reminding myself to slow down and ease into spring.

One of the first projects on my list is to plant a small dye garden. Plants I’m including are Zinnias, Bachelor’s Buttons, Clary Sage, Marigolds, and several other plants already in the perennial bed. While it is very much an experiment this year from beginning to end, I feel like even if the dyeing process doesn’t produce colors quite as I had hoped, they will still be interesting.

If you are contemplating a dye garden this summer, check with your local hardware or garden center for seeds. A couple of my favorite online sources for seeds and information include Seed Savers Exchange and Floret. With so many people planting gardens these days, I have found local stores to have the most selection at this juncture. That said, online sources are restocking as they can.

Another benefit of growing these flowers – fresh-cut flowers for inside the house through fall and last minute bouquets to drop off with friends and family!

Follow along on Facebook and Instagram – @YvonneMaloneStudio – to see photos of how this project unfolds in the coming months.

Mini Twig Sculptures

Twig wrapped in perle cotton beneath woven through leaves

Some years back, my family and I took in Steve Tobin’s Steelroots exhibit at The Morton Arboretum. Inspired by what we saw, my daughter and I came home and made our own mini sculptures from twigs we collected in our yard and perle cotton. Recently, I came across one of the twigs stuck in a vase that had somehow made its way to the back of a cabinet.

To make the sculptures, we looked for twigs with an interesting form – if there were scars or other interesting marks, we left those sections unwrapped. We played with different lengths of perle cotton – sometimes using just pinks or greens, other times using multiple colors.

When finished, we laid them on a table in the hallway where they were constantly rearranged every time someone walked by. Other found made their way into the “exhibit” – rocks, an acorn, a paper snake, origami birds… This time around, I pulled an interesting (but pesky) weed from the yard and put it in a vase on the kitchen table. And, then of course, the play began: weaving the wrapped twig into the leaves different ways, laying it beneath the leaves, propping it up alongside the vase…

For a fun creative break today, take a walk and gather some interesting twigs of your own, then wrap them in perle cotton, yarn, twine, kitchen string, cording or whatever fiber you have on hand. Arrange the mini sculptures on a table or your desk – and then rearrange again and again!

Engaging with Nature – The Explorer, Artist, Kid in All of Us

I love trees and flowers in full bloom but… I am totally fascinated by what proceeds the color show and what remains at the end of the season. For that reason, “A Tree in the House: Flowers for Your Home, Special Occasions and Everyday” by Annabelle Hickson caught my eye. The stunning arrangements she creates from what she finds each season is wonderful – especially when she creates a cotton cloud over the table and other installations! The photography is beautiful and nothing is over the top – just pared down, simple settings where nature takes center stage.

Reading this book and watching spring unfold (with a couple of hiccups along the way like the freak heavy snowstorm the other night), I am waking up to the abundance of beauty around us – including the debris that I am carting off to the compost pile and the shoots that are poking up through the soil. Some of those twigs and seed heads will make it into the house to sit on the mantle for a week or two, others might even make it into a craft project or inspire a needlework piece.

So take a break from whatever is consuming your day and grab your kids, a friend, colleague, or significant other and go outside to play like a kid, explore like a scientist, create like an artist: Bring along a paper bag to collect some interesting branches and whatever else you might find, as well as a magnifying glass to examine the intricate designs that are not immediately apparent or the bugs that you are leaving behind but look oh so interesting. Then, bring it all home and set about creating your own artful arrangements! Have someone who can’t make the trek outside with you, like a friend who’s been sick or a small child? Share what you find with them – and don’t forget the magnifying glass : )

“One of the greatest joys of playing and experimenting with flowers is that it opens your eyes to the beautiful things growing around you. The ones that are already there, doing their thing, that you didn’t have to buy or water or prune. You start to notice them. Like words whose meaning you’ve just learnt (nadir and akimbo), you start, as if by magic, to see them everywhere.” – Annabelle Hickson