New Needlepoint Collaborator

My wife's lifetime role of educator has taken a new turn with her granddaughter Amelia as student in needlepoint.  Much love and patience were injected into this lovely still life, though ofttimes the progress of the piece suffered its own still life.  Nonetheless, our six-year-old Amelia, turning seven just at completion, persevered and accomplished a fine first needlepoint, a gift to her parents.   Readers of this blog might realize I fabricated the accompanying frame out of cherry wood as I have done with my wife Sara's needlepoints, ten framed pieces so far.  Amelia also helped out some with the framing, bringing out the rich cherry wood color with applications of Watco oil.

A hearty congratulations to the artist and also to her dad Josh whose birthday is today!

Meyers Collaboration VIII - Framed Needlepoint

Marriage is often described as compromise, but why not collaboration? Our husband and wife collaborations of needlepoint and woodworking allow us to labor quite easily together without getting into one an other's hair. In this eighth collaboration it was necessary to turn the typical flat 2” cherry molding sideways in order to keep the overall frame size down due to location space constraints. In order to add interest to the perimeter two 1/4” square black walnut strips were embedded into the cherry. If any future refinisher wants to sand down this frame they will certainly never go through such so-to-speak veneer:

We are currently using a somewhat unconventional method of matting needlepoint. Our first collaboration, however, was mounted in the typical fashion of stretching the needlepoint canvas over a Masonite board with heavy thread. Frankly we found this very difficult and required extreme care not to distort the canvas. Since then, we have developed this cheating method which is much easier:

1. A sheet of thin cotton batting is attached to a piece of mat board, the same dimensions as the exterior of the cut mat board, using spray adhesive.
2. The canvas is then “stretched” flat over the cotton batting using one's palms. Interestingly the cotton acts as a type of weak Velcro and adheres to the canvas keeping it in position. Also, the white color is an excellent background for visible holes in the canvas.  Furthermore, the thickness of the batting (about 1/8") prevents knots behind the canvas from telegraphing to the front.
3. Lastly a couple of continuous strips of double-stick tape are attached to all sides of the back of the cut mat, which is then placed carefully in position, centering the art piece exactly in the cut hole.

In none of our pieces using this method has the needlepoint slipped out of place or sagged. No promises, though, as to how long this will last.  Stretching with thread is still probably better.

I continue to be impressed by the enormous number of hours stitching a piece such as this still life demands. All things considered the extra detail inlaying black walnut into the frame may have raised the proportion of my work for one of these collaborations from the usual 2% to maybe 3%.

Notes: As usual the mat was expertly cut at Sarnoff Art Supplies & Framing in Tucson.  The glass was removed for the purpose of photography without reflections.  The frame is finished with multiple coats of  Waterlox Sealer Finish.

Meyers Collaboration VII -- Framed Needlepoint

This is the seventh collaboration between my wife Sara Meyers and myself in which she stitches the needlepoint work, and I build the frame. As mentioned in previous posts about these pieces the use of the term collaboration is really a misnomer as 98% - 99% of the work rests in the stitching, a rather rigorous art requiring the difficult friendship of patience and concentration.  I am simply amazed by her beautiful work. The heart shape, however, provided a significant challenge to matting.  We checked at least four commercial frame shops in Tucson, and none were able to cut the inner mat precisely to the shape of the heart, though the outer mat was nicely cut, as always, by Jinou Naval at Sarnoff Custom Framing. Our friend Nathan Benson took up the challenge, and through a time-consuming and considerable sequence of image transfers and manipulations he was able to program his laser engraver to cut the inner mat very close to the perimeter of the heart. Sara then added a background continental stitch of gray thread around the silver heart perimeter to fill the small remaining gap and cover the raw canvas. Nathan was also able to add the nice touch of a subtle and delicate "signature" and date to Sara's piece:

Several combinations of speed and power proved unable to eliminate laser scorching of the paper, though 50% power did work better.  The edge of the mat was completely Cajun and brown flares radiated onto the surface.  This is not surprising considering the low ignition point of paper, Fahrenheit 451 if I recall, a number we might keep in mind.  Interestingly, about 90% of the surface scorching could be removed with a simple white eraser which did not alter at all the texture or sheen of the mat board (also obtained from Sarnoff).  When it came to removing the charred surface on the mat's cut edge 180 grit sandpaper worked very well.  The image below shows the mat board prior to removal of the scorching:

Café Shims - Table Leveling

You are sitting with your lover; it's a lovely sidewalk table on Place du Tertre in Montmartre. The waiter has just brought your wine, red wine, of course. The glasses sparkle in the fading Paris sunlight. You gaze into your lover's eyes and lean forward for a little kiss. Suddenly the force of your elbow finds that one leg suspended off the plane of the other three and voilà: first the seesaw down, then the recoil up. The glass of red wine tips and spills into your lover's lap. The deft lover, however, would have surreptitiously tested the table upon arrival, slipping his (or her!) café shim under the offending leg and avoided such unpleasant surprise.

Everyone has been annoyed by a rocking restaurant table. Still, you probably won't have a cafe shim with you, but if you did, you would certainly impress your companions. Andrew Knowlton wrote in the April 2016 issue of bon appétit, speaking of a Beverly Hills restaurant, “They solved the single biggest annoyance in restaurants: wobbly tables.”

The set of six is made of random hardwoods, hand-sanded and oiled, not hardware shims at all! They are 1 3/4" wide and 3” long, a little smaller than a business card, and taper from 3/16” to near zero.

A novelty perhaps, but shims are useful: leveling furniture and pendulum clocks, securing hammerheads, locking Hungarian shelves, etc. 

Suspended Drawer Side Table

Why not have your cake and eat it too, why not have the airy look of an open side table and yet provide enclosed storage for all those myriad items you might like next to a couch but out of sight? Such was the inspiration for the “Suspended Drawer Side Table,” which has roomy drawer storage but no apron or cabinet enclosing it. A pair of well-waxed undermount all wood drawer glides allow easy sliding but provide no apparent reason for the drawer to stay attached. The grain direction of the top ensures that contraction and expansion do not affect the fit of the drawer since little movement occurs with the grain through the seasons. Just to mix it up the grain direction is rotated on the shelf, though here movement would do little more than shift the legs in and out a tad. The L-shaped cleat screwed to the underside of the tabletop also acts as a stop when it contacts the back of the drawer face upon closing. A little surprise, however, is piling the drawer to its rim only to find the top object contacting that same cleat.

 

I used my nearly trademark selection of cherry and black walnut, a quite appealing color combination, and, as per usual, asymmetrical piecing. This piece finds its place in our own home where it fulfills a plus thirty-year-old promise to replace a cheap, commercial mahogany plywood side table...a blatant case of the cobbler's shoes.

Detail of slide

View of the back

Meyers Collaboration VI

Now each of the grandchildren has their own needlepoint by Sara Meyers, most of which appear in past posts.  This collaboration runs a similar 98/2 ratio, needlepoint/woodwork, though my work has more "weight."

Memory Box -- Everyday Ofrenda

It was in Flagstaff that I first encountered the wonderful Mexican tradition of creating ofrendas, offering altars for the departed, during Dia de los Muertos, which correlates to Halloween, All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day in the Anglo tradition.  Two things struck me the most:  first,  just the very practice of collecting photos and special artifacts from an individual's life in order to remember and honor them and second, a strong injection of humor into our human condition of dying, taking the grim reaper to the Jay Leno Show.

This memory box was created to hold just such precious objects from a life past, a kind of everyday ofrenda to visit, to remember, to honor.  Fundamentally similar to a jewelry box, it departs, however, from it by being taller and having no removable tray or segmented compartments.  In the Dia de los Muertos tradition the dead are said to visit their ofrenda, take sustenance and cleanse themselves.  Regarding this, a true story:  I was pulling my F150 up to the garage, this memory box in the cab, and a powerful dust devil parked itself in our drive forcing me to stop.  I waited for it to move along, but it just dissipated, vanished, leaving a snowfall of yellow palo verde petals, identical in color to the petals that were tossed at the memorial for the individual whose memory box I carried.  Arizona and New Mexico:  places where wind is the garb of spirits.

Dovetail Detail

El Tiradito, Barrio Viejo, Tucson

Interior Detail

Meyers Collaboration V

This is the fifth of a series of framed needlepoints.  The stitching, which represents 99% of the work, was accomplished by my wife Sara.  My simple cherry frame is edged with a round over and small fillet.  The piece was made in honor of the birth of our granddaughter Hazel, though it does not mean we expect her to be counting sheep in order to fall asleep.

"Quilted-Wood" Headboard

Dinner conversation with friends last night turned to the matter that typically purpose precedes design. Such was the case with my “quilted wood” headboard where the purpose was somehow to mimic the feel and pattern of the quilt in the wood. To match the beige background material I chose hard maple. To mimic the dark border of the quilt I chose cherry. I then measured the size of the four-block cloth pattern and duplicated it with wooden blocks of the exact same dimensions. A template was made and the four-block pattern was routed, not easily, out of the hard maple field into which the wooden blocks were embedded. I thought briefly about a more dramatic, high contrast set of woods, say ebony, zebrawood, bubinga, purpleheart, but aside from my aversion to tropical hardwoods, I sought more muted and subtle variations in order to echo the feel of the quilt. Thus, I chose North American woods, both soft and hard: Douglas fir, redwood, hemlock, cherry, black walnut and oak. The basic form of suspending the headboard on dowels (maple) from the posts I have used before, one of its advantages being that the headboard is easily removed from the posts with 8 screws making it possible to transport the piece in even a small coupe. These two will likely stay companions for a very long time.

Meyers Collaboration II

Flagstaff Desk -- Style 3

 The Flagstaff Desk was my name for a series of study carrel type desks that sold well way back at crafts shows held in December at the Coconino Center for the Arts.   I kept one for myself and still enjoy such features as integral valence lighting, a bulletin board, handy pigeon holes in some versions, Flagstaff Desk -- Style 1, the huge "pencil" drawer and matching companion chair.  In all cases the carcase is solid wood as are all the drawer sides.  A flat screen monitor now often finds itself against the bulletin board, a keyboard on the desk top.  Even so the sense of entering a nook or private enclosure remains.

Hall Table

Letter Opener

Wooden Teaspoons

Hungarian Sideboard with Razor-Thin Lightbox

 

 

 



The "lightbox" consists of 72 ultra-thin LED lights set in strips and placed in a rabbet just beneath the rabbet for the obscure plate glass, thus making the whole assembly only 3/4" thick.  The bottom is not closed since the lights cast nicely both up and down.  The 6 watts of LED lighting are sufficient to illuminate a room.  As far as the mounting goes, I thought why not use the Hungarian Shelves system just for a single shelf, aka sideboard.  The beautiful wine glasses are by George Averbeck, Fire on the Mountain.

 

 



 

Meyers Collaboration I

The needlepoint sampler by Sara Meyers was facilitated by materials and studies at the West in Tucson.  The piece is stretched over 1/4" masonite.  The frame is made with cutoffs from the upcoming "Hungarian Sideboard with Razor-Thin Light Box."  The matting was expertly crafted by Mia Schneider at Photographic Works in Tucson.  The glass does not touch the thread and was salvaged from discarded storm windows, though remarkably scratch-free.  Mia managed somehow to fit the entire assembly into the 3/4" thickness of the cherry.

Cheese Paddles

In Flagstaff our woodstove had an endless appetite for table saw cutoffs, but in Tucson these are reduced to 28" lengths, becoming cheese paddles.  They have not, however, been tested for actual paddle ball.

Custom Door

Hungarian Shelves Slot Height Revisited

Two recent sets of Hungarian Shelves ran thick and thin, i.e. in one case I made the slot height taller than my recommendation Slot Height for Hungarian Shelves and in the second case (the set above) shorter.  At first I thought the tighter the fit of the shelf in its slot, the better, but I have changed that thinking for several reasons.  First, wedges that taper to a knife edge are more likely to break upon insertion or removal.  Second, they offer too little wood for compression when driven into the slot.  Third, the thinner wedges lack rigidity and tend to fall away from the bottom of the shelf.  My revision is to make the slot height always a little more than 1/16" rather than less.  I found that even a 1/8" space works but that tends to be a little too much.

The uprights are African mahogany stained to match the accelerated darkened cherry, accomplished by some careful time in the sun.  As always the natural face of cherry is so lovely.  She requires no makeup.

Commercial furniture makers still think that cherry should look black.

Yet More Hungarian Shelves

Finally realized upon installing this set of shelves that knocking in the wedges with an oversized block that extends beyond the front edge of the shelf not only allows placement of the wedge perfectly square to the shelf but also prevents marring of the bottom of the shelf with the hammer.