Earth day, art day

I have been lying low. I had oral surgery yesterday and while it was relatively minor, my mouth is achey and uncomfortable and it makes eating and talking difficult. I have a plastic stent covering the roof of my mouth, protecting the wound where tissue was cut out for a graft. ( I know—gross. Sorry I mentioned it...) so I am thpeaking with a lithp ath well.  Avoiding people contact.  This afternoon I felt up to a little art project.

I have a couple bags of stuff that are the remains, cut from the shirts I have been taking apart to use in my quilts. I intended to toss that stuff out, but somehow have been unable to part with those bags of collars and plackets and the flat-felled seams from all those shirts. 

Today I pulled out a big handful of seams and a buttonhole strip and decided to see if I could come up with something to hang outside. I like the idea of bits of art designed to hang outdoors to be affected by, and eventually succumb to the sun and wind and weather. I made weather grams in a class years ago and hung them in the garden and watched them weather and fade. They are a lovely tradition that originated many years ago here in Portland, by the famous calligrapher, Lloyd Reynolds. You still see them around the city. They were in the back of my mind, as well as Tibetan prayer flags, that are left out to the weather. 

I took my scraps to the studio and, along the way, picked up a couple sticks that I attached some to.

Then I pinned it up on my design wall and used more of the long seam "strings" to weave across the piece. 

I strung some of the buttons I've been cutting off the shirt onto a heavy thread and appropriated a little stitched heart that has been pinned to my wall for several months, and added them. 

Then I nailed it up on the big ash tree next to the bridge. 

I will see it coming and going from the studio to the house. I wonder how the elements will change it. My little recycled Earth Day banner. Maybe I will make more.