Making Wood

For several years I have made a small faux birch woodpile in my store when the firewood season arrives.

Birch is my favorite tree, which I like to imitate in rag weave, this time with a rosepath threading. The pillow weft is mainly wool blanket wool, with supplemental rag bits cut from a black and white linen checked weave. The log ends are soft cocoa-colored blanket wool, machine embroidered.

This time I sewed the pillow together, lacing the selvedge edges around the pillow form, then sprinkled the whole pillow with warm water, and tumble dried it in the hot dryer, so it shrank perfectly to fit the pillow form. Yes, perfectly. Which gives weight to the idea that sometimes things work out as planned.