Emily's Artistry

I'm "a day late and a dollar short" (as the old saying goes!) posting more of Emily's creations since I said on Monday I'd post them "tomorrow"!  But, apparently, I was referring to that particular brand of "tomorrow" that never seems to happen after "today"  in my world!  "Tomorrow" can potentially land on any random day in the future -- kind of like "manana" doesn't necessarily mean the day after today in Spanish.  "Manana" also means "morning" so I think the general idea is just the equivalent of "not now".  As for the "dollar short" part, the whole point of this post (and most of my posts!) is not needing dollars at all!  So I can just disregard that, right?

Emily walks on water in my eyes -- a privilege granted by her status of being my firstborn.  But I also think she's very genuinely talented.  You are welcome to judge for yourself as I am about to lay out a smorgasbord of her creations for your perusal!

When Sara-Grace was born, big sister Emily was 7 1/2.  She welcomed her new baby sister with a handmade teddy bear that she created all on her own without any help from me at all.  In fact, I didn't even know about it until she was done.

This teddy is an interesting study of rudimentary sewing and construction techniques -- which makes it all the more dear and charming!  Hand-sewn with non-matching thread, constructed with the seams on the outside, detailed with a marker -- you can really see how Emily's little mind labored to figure out how to put it all together so as to come out with a bear in the end.  This is one of the first things I would save if the house was on fire!

The second thing I would save if the house were ablaze would be MY teddy bear made by Emily.

My teddy came shortly after Sara-Grace's and shows some evolution in technique (like, it has legs!).  It also has button eyes and a button nose (no, I won't lapse into singing "Frosty the Snowman" here!), a couple of shirt buttons, and a tie. 

The really touching, wonderful, great cosmic thing about my teddy is that, in scavenging for materials, Emily inadvertently happened on to extremely meaningful items that she combined into another extremely meaningful item in my bear. 

The striped fabric was a scrap from the shower curtain I made for the apartment I lived in in California for three and a half years.  It then moved with me to my favorite place in the world: Laguna Beach, California, where I lived for two more years.  That fabric was takes my right back to those wondeful, California, grad school years! 

My teddy's shirt buttons were extras from my favorite maternity outfit:  a white, sleeveless, knit top and pants set that I wore until Emily nearly burst through the front of it (and then both her sisters did the same later)! 

The gray-blue crepe covered eye buttons and the tie were from my mother's wedding dress which she wore on October 14, 1978 when she married my step-father, John Cromwell, in the livingroom of our house on Whippoorwill Lane in Enid, Oklahoma.  My life changed for the better in so many ways that day! 

Lastly, the black silk velvet nose button was my grandmother's.  She had a jar of buttons that she kept in her amazing built-in shoe cabinet.  She kept all the extra buttons that came with her very fine, glamourous clothes (my grandmother was all sophistocated and "40's glam" and was definitely not your calico-sewing, cookie-baking, country variety of "grandma"!).  Grandmother would let me pour the buttons out of her button jar and play with them (which I did for hours!).  That black silk velvet button?  It was my very favorite of them all.  Somehow, Emily chose that one to use on my teddy! 

Last year, Emily did some really amazing ink drawings for her art class.  We copied them and made note cards which we gave to the grandmas for Christmas.  Here is that series:

Aren't they amazing?

For Christmas last year, Emily gave Mark and I a really incredible, meaningful gift -- a framed photo she had taken of the two of us (a rare thing since I usually take the photos and am almost never in them!).  Emily had snapped this shot of us months before.  For Christmas she blew it up, printed, and framed it.  We were blown away (particularly because she didn't seem to like us much at that time due to typical teenage angst and all)!

For my birthday this year, Emily presented me with another of her amazing drawings -- this incredible, curly, bird that just has so much motion and grace captured in it's feathers!

As I finish this post I am reminded of other examples of Emily's artistry.  Perhaps there will be a third part to this series!  But I won't promise to post it "tomorrow" because that just gets confusing!