Toby

@tobymacnutt.bsky.social

228 Followers 87 Following

Poet, dancer, textile artist ✨ they/them disabled trans queer

The sides, treadles, and front beam of a floor loom standing skeletal on a square rug
A brown-spotted, yellow moth (some kind of crocus geometer) clinging to the underside of a leaf
screen grab of a tweet from "not a wolf" reading (all caps): I HOPE THIS EMAIL DOES NOT FIND YOU I HOPE YOUR CHAIR HAS GROWN OVER WITH MOSS I HOPE A PLEASANT BUT UNOBSERVED BEAM OF LIGHT HITS YOUR DESK PERFECTLY THROUGH THE COLLAPSED CEILING I HOPE THE SILENCE IS DEAFENING
A four-legged freestanding aerial rig hung with deep blue silks over a pair of mats, in a shady corner of my backyard lush with greenery and blue sky
Close up of faded blue and white plaid flannel sleeve, with an irregular oval opening in it in which a cheerful white cartoon bear with a lemon-yellow nose is standing. The edges are neatly stitched down in dark thread, ringed with yellow stitching for security, and further away the patch edges inside the sleeve have also been secured with dark running stitch.
A section of quilt spread over my lap, partially stitched through with sashiko quilting. Blueish mottled fabric forms a partial S shape, and it's this section that's stitched with a blue pattern of coin-sized overlapping circles. The repeating overlaps make little four-petaled flowers.
Several sprays of delphinium (winglike vivid blue flowers on delicate stems) in a round lab flask as a vase. The golden hour sun is striking them exactly and leaving the background deeply shadowed. A few objects from the clutter of the coffee table are discernable: a pin cushion, headphones, papers, a small round wooden box with a delicately turned handle sticking up like a stem.
A burying beetle on a rose leaf. It is a chunky black beetle with orange stripes across its wing covers and a golden fuzzy appearance to the shield plate behind its head and on its butt.
A tall messy tangle of growth, with brown-eyes susans and little white daisy like flowers (fleabane) in the front, and taller things behind not yet flowering, as well as grasses and vines
A very small brown lizard with shed skin lifting off her back
screenshot of a webpage on Vimeo reading "Vimeo On Demand - Shutdown Notice" with a timeline forbidding new uploads or sales after late-summer/early-autumn 2026
A spray of rose buds and leaves sprinkled with raindrops. Most buds are tightly closed and green still, but one in the center is just open enough to see its butter yellow color about to bloom
An impressively scarlet rose just unfurling from the bud
A just-opening peony flower: vivid bubblegum pink outer petals, large and smooth and cupped, around dense ruffled inner petals in a slightly lighter, gentler shade of the same bubblegum-Barbie-pink
A dirt encrusted butter knife with fancy little embossed vines and swirls on the handle
Red columbine, its red flowers hanging down, bell shaped and starlike at the edges, yellow in the centers, pollen parts hanging below
A massive ruffly magenta flower, bright and dark as it catches the light with near iridescence
A PocketBook ereader displaying cover of Shannon Chakraborty's "The Tapestry of Fate" in extremely crisp greyscale
A freestanding aerial rig - four long steel legs leaning in like a pyramid supporting a center bar from which hang rope and pulleys. It's on short grass in my yard with blue sky and trees and greenery behind, on a beautiful early-summer day.
A leather work glove, heavily used, with a pea size hole in the ring finger tip. Also the stitching on the palm is coming out but don't mind that
My hand holding a small (~3cm long) clip-in electronics fuse from my microwave, greasy and slightly blackened at one end
The same gradient lace shawl, now damp and pinned stretched out on the floor. It is twice the size it looked previously, and instead of being squishy and rumpled it's thin and lacy. The mesh at the top is airy, radiating into feathery columns that end with scalloped points.
A curved shawl in a gradient yarn, rusty red at the top, to bark brown, to bluish grey and the very edge is silvery white. The lace pattern is clearly a mesh in the main body and radiates from there, but it is still scrumpled up and hard to see at this stage before washing and stretching (blocking).
A small (bathtub-size) garden pond edged and lined with rocks, plants growing prolifically from the water around the edges and between the rocks and tiny dots of duckweed starting to fill the center.
A lap quilt top laid out on the floor. It's a checkerboard pattern of 2.5" squares. The colored squares from a gradient, light/white at the left and dark/black at the right, blue at the top down through green, yellow, orange, pink, purple at the bottom, saturated and all different scraps. The white squares are speckled with rainbow bits and have been placed to match the dominant color fade.
A loose, gestural ink sketch of a horse on a lined notebook page. It is rather more, let's say, "compactly proportioned" than your average horse.
A quilting workstation with cutting mat, rulers, cutter, fabric shreds, and stacks of 2x2 checker blocks
A collection of battered and broken objects including: a baby doll arm, a clear marble, a cowboy leg, a railway spike, a ceramic dog missing its back legs, a ceramic cat missing its face, a bigger ceramic cat missing its belly, a metal biplane, and a tall elegant intact ceramic cat
A stretch of gently sloping bank below a plowed field. The slope section between two big trees is about 20' long and 5-10' deep. A trash bag full of root material and various tools lay on the messed up dirt and there's a big brush pile to the side. A few more shrubby plants, daylilies, and bleeding hearts remain to be pulled.
Sashiko quilting in progress in dark purple on a gold-spattered lighter purple section, with a pattern of geometric repeating six-pointed stars
A screenshot of an old tweet from Birds Rights Activist saying "I am feel uncomfortable when we are not about me?"
The storage in position inside the ottoman, nested nicely without any need for fasteners or other supports, two big and three small pockets ready for items
One third of the circle, sewn in yellow fabrics. The wedge is divided, with two pocket sections along the outer curve and one at the inner point, the wall between them matching the arc. The join with the divider between the two outer sections makes a Y seam (tricky). Each pocket is a different yellow fabric: one starry flannel, one pale semi solid, one bookshelf print.
A pile of folded fabrics: a metallic art deco print in blue-green and gold, and other fabrics matching individual colors from the print: dark blue, teal, several yellows, a gold printed cream
A cup shaped birds' nest of dried grass and very fine twigs, holding three eggs, white heavily speckled with brown.
Gently lifting a nodding blossom up with my fingers to show the interior of its bell shape, pale pink with speckles of burgundy around the pale yellow center
The word "your" spelled out in quilted pieces, lower case, purple scraps against a white background scattered with various rainbow colored print bits
Libby screenshot of a deep search showing books 1 and 3 but no sign of 2
The reverse of the quilt above, a solid dandelion yellow, clearly showing the stitch patterns in their various colors. The texture is slightly crinkled and the reverse stitches rather uneven, more than the front, but hopefully charmingly so.
Hand quilting in progress, a large scale geometric patchwork in purple, blue, pink, and green. The blue section has a hand stitched swirling cloudlike medallion in blue, the smaller pink squares have rounded geometric patterns stitched in pink, and the purple strips are underway with a repeating Japanese star pattern. The green background squares are safety pinned through the the backing, unstitched.
A mug sitting abandoned in a sunny mostly dormant garden bed
A sunlit clump of bluebells, rounded lettuce-y leaves upright with a cluster of tight pale purple buds in the center
Two slim booklets of stencils for embroidery, titled "Sashiko Stencils" and "Sashiko Stencils #2". The covers show nine geometric or medallion shaped Japanese stitch patterns each.
Quilt folded back to show the solid dandelion yellow back side in the area of the completed stitch medallion. It's not quite as evenly stitched as the front, but still makes a clear reverse of the pattern.
A quilt scrumpled up in my lap, layers safety pinned together, a large blue square framed in an embroidery hoop with nested swirls being hand stitched inside it. Another blue square further away has three finished swirls that form a circle together. Green, purple, and pink spaces are not yet stitched or marked.
Looking out over a lightly snow covered yard and garden, more snowglobe-style fluffy snow falling
A shallow bowl with a bed of rice under katsudon: leftover pork cutlet simmered in egg with onion and sauce
Deep purple leaves curling up from a bed of moss and winter plant detritus
German shepherd Jax has put his huge noble head on my partner's crossed leg, looking up at him with a serious and focused expression
A Dutch oven full of bubbling chicken veggie gravy with herbed drop biscuits swimming on top
Personality quiz result of a spiky hedgehog, spiny outside soft inside and solo and fact/detail oriented statements in bubbles around
Me with a tired/wired smile in my back brace and a shawl, raising a cider toast in a wine glass
Still frame extracted from A Singular They, with overlaid text. In the image, I am sitting on a tall wooden stool on top of a large wooden box, body in profile, elbows resting on knees, head turned toward the viewer. Stark lighting strikes me from the side and the rest is shadowy blackness. The overlaid text reads, "A Singular They, online tonight" with symbols for accessibility: information, closed captions, ASL interpretation, audio description.
A photo montage of rehearsal notebooks, work in progress showings, team selfies, edits, audio description, costume creation, and more
Toby framed by their crutches to either side, mid leg-swirl crossing their body, red wrap dress swinging out around their hips. They're on an outdoor stage, all wood, built in herringbone panels with a curving roof overhead and the trees just visible behind through the gaps.
Among dry pale leaf litter, a tiny curl of deep purple, nearly black new leaf is poking up. It looks like just another bit of forest floor detritus until you know that's how bluebells start their leaves.
Selfie with lace knit shawl draped over my shoulders, falling to hip length. The bright turquoise frames my face, the dark section next in the gradient creates dramatic shadow, and the golden edge seems to glow. Glints of the matching beads throughout are just visible.
Short clip of me in business attire (blue buttonup, khakis, brown dress shoes) posing and rolling around on a wooden floor before belly-squirming backward into a sun puddle to rest.
A wide, more-than-half-circle knit lace shawl, stretched and pinned on the floor. It is a gradient from vivid turquoise at the top center edge through deep blue to navy to black to brown to gold at the outer edge. The stitch pattern is columns of radiating chevrons.
The same knit lace shawl, spread out and pinned within an inch of its life on towels on the floor. It is now slightly more generously curved than half-circle and has more than doubled in size. The lace pattern of radiating chevrons is clearly visible and the gold part of the gradient is much more prominent than before.