The news is enough to make a hermit out of me (although in truth, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch). Trust in government as a solution to anything is hard to find these days.
Fortunately, my run-in with Covid is now mostly a memory … my senses of taste and smell have returned, although I’m still napping more than usual. The good news is that I’m back to stitching.
The working title for my latest pillow top is The Edge of Heaven, which is how I feel when walking along the shoreline in Avon. It is the perfect nexus of land, sea and sky.
And so I found the pieces of Deb’s cloth that I brought to the beach to be perfect representations of the flowers blooming behind the dunes, the deep purples of broken surf clam shells, the rosy interiors of heart cockle shells, the foaming edge of the breaker zone, the flaming skies of sunrise and sunset, the flashes of color from bathing suits and kites, and the haunting reflections of moonlight …
But I needed sand to tie them all together, which I found at Burnley & Trowbridge, a wonderful supplier of fabrics for historic costuming. And it’s worth noting they also have an extremely generous (which is to say, free) series of videos on stitching technique, plus online workshops on garment construction (which do cost money). If only they had been around back in the days when I was still living in Williamsburg!
The cloth they sent was everything I hoped for … the crepe dark and pebbly, a perfect analog for wet sand … and the osnaburg crackling crisp with a yellow-ish cast that perfectly matched the hot dry sand of a summer’s day.
I stitched some of the patches together with Deb’s thread, others with black DMC floss, which recalled the dark micaceous sand that clung to my feet even after rinsing off at the house. The darker crepe mimicked the water’s edge, the lighter Osnaburg stood in for the sandy dune that just barely separated our house from the sea (click to see full images) …
After stitching all the patches together, I added a silhouette of the 50 miles of Hatteras Island, from its northernmost end, also known as Pea Island, to the southernmost tip with its ferry terminal leading to Okracoke …
But I took the piece one step too far when I added kantha, with which I had hoped to imply waves running toward the shore. Unfortunately, the stitching overwhelmed the blocks of color …
So I tore it all out and went with a much lighter touch of #12 Valdani perle cotton along the sandy edges of the cloth …
the stitches like tracks left in the sand …
And so with that, I’m calling it done and will now work on a companion piece to serve as the back of the pillow it will become.
I'm Going to Texas (version 2.0) 
Beautiful.
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Each patch of Deb’s cloth is a work of art unto itself
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First, so glad to know that you are on the mend, feeling so much better and best of all, that you have your sense of taste and smell back. You certainly have not lost your sense of touch because your magic fingers have created a cloth that engages all of the senses that speak so strongly of the sea, the ocean waves, the flowers, the shells, the sand and that calming sense that we feel when we simply sit and gaze outward toward the horizon. How we instinctively create that which brings us solace and joy and The Edge of Heaven does that not only for you but for those of us who see it.
May I add a bit to your info on linen: I have a wonderful Irish book, authored by Nicholas Mosse, the famous Irish potter. The book is titled Irish Country, A Personal Look at Decorating with Pottery, Fabrics and Furniture in the Irish Style: On the chapter on Fabrics this:
“In 1272, there is an early reference to Irish lined being used ecclesiastically in Winchester, on the far side of England, so the skills to produce excellent cloth were around at that early date.”
“When export duties were removed from textile imports in 1700, the linen trade changed from a small, family-style craft into a bigger and bigger business. Still, the countryside did not lose all of these handcraft skills, however. The very finest line, used for handkerchiefs was still being produced by hand weaving: it was the only suitable technique for this finest of fine stuff.”
“Every family, here has a little bottom cupboard drawer full of heirloom fabrics, handed down from grandmother to beyond. In Ireland, more often than not these small treasures are made of linen. By the end of the nineteenth century, sewing schools were established throughout Ireland to promote this penny-earning craft among the women of the countryside. The thousands of women who spent their lives embroidering linen, git, or tatting its edges have left a legacy…”
“The qualities of linen, as a fabric have remained true even in this last gasp of the twentieth century. It can be pure gauze or an impenetrable mass, it is strong and breathes as your body breathes. You can print on it, embroider it, pleat it or knit it. Whatever you do, you can count on it for strength, longevity and functionality, three attributes which certainly make it a venerable component of the Irish country style.”
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Linen is my favorite fiber by far … so I love learning more about it …
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I love your descriptions of the sources of beach colors. It’s poetry, another part is the creative process.
I too am glad you’re feeling better! The cloth speaks to a return to craft, for sure. I like how the color peaks out of the grid.
BTW, and you probably know this, in SC in the mid-eighteenth century, osnaburg was used to make clothing for the enslaved and so was also referred to as “Negro cloth.”
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Dee thanks for sharing that fact .. absolutely interesting!
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Deb’s cloth and threads are poetic in and of themselves … they bring out the best in me!
And yes, I well recall the runaway slave ads in the Virginia Gazette that detailed the clothing worn … osnaburg was frequently mentioned. This modern version is true to form … very scratchy, with visible stem fragments … must have been wretched stuff to wear, although for my purposes the texture is just right.
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Liz first of all yes it is wonderful news that you’re feeling better .. sounds like you along with Hazel really got it bad. Yikes!!
This memory piece you’re creating is absolutely fantastic .. for years to come it’ll conjure up all the wonderful memories that you mentioned here in this post. You’re so creative and have fantastic color sense. I love it!!!
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I count myself fortunate that the symptoms weren’t worse … the wracking cough was enough to make one imagine what a horrible way it would be to die
And yes, I love stitching memory into cloth … it makes me smile when others see it that way, too
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i will try again. …
i love so much how the photographs in the previous post translate so perfectly to this stitched
rendition..the colors, movement, joy of the humans and the earth/sea…so touching….
such a perfect Memory keeper
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I’m glad you tried again … and that you saw the through-line from the earlier post about our family vacation … I smile
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so excited to see how you put those gorgeous fibers of Debs together, and now the stitching over top, oh my! So in love with this piece.
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and happy days continue as I’m using more of Deb’s dyeing for the back!
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Ohhh, can’t wait to see that as well
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Liz~ You have such a knack, such talent for “depicting” places, experiences in cloth. This one truly shines. I can see your beach days all wrapped up in each square. Beautiful.
You were in Avon, CT? Did you happen to see this house?
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thanks Nancy … we were in Avon, NC on the Outer Banks, five miles north of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse … it’s been a long time since I was in Connecticut, but I well remember how it’s chock full of beautiful houses
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Ah yes, NC. Last night I dreamed I came to your blog to read, opened it up and there was a notice from you saying that due to the state of the world, you just couldn’t keep up with blogging anymore, so this was your last post. I WAS SO SAD!!! In my email today was the notification of this post, so I happily came back to look all over again! ❤️
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What a nightmare 😉
Seriously, I’m glad you came back so I could put in this quote from the On Being podcast with Ann Hamilton that Deb G wrote about:
“How can your small act, your singular act of making have any consequences?”
To which I would reply, each small act of kindness, each act of connection, matters … and produces a positive effect greater in magnitude than the one making it could ever imagine.
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Glad you’re feeling better Liz. Isn’t it interesting how stitching totally changes the look and feel of a piece? I really like what you ended up with.
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these days I try not to undo stitching, but this is the exception that proves the rule … and deep down I knew linen isn’t really the best choice for kantha
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A beautiful memory map, with just the right amount of stitch marking. I love the last little hints of the waves, a gentle in and out. Feels to me like the very right decision. One thing I like about thread and stitching (compared to ink and paper) is that ability to just say goodbye to an earlier thought or decision and begin anew on the same piece, rather than having to set is aside and start again, or continue working with a less than satisfactory. piece. Sometimes work arounds and mistakes work; sometimes they don’t. This resolutions seems’just right’. And that island line…sigh.
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the island is a wonder … 50 miles long, but just 33 square miles, so it really is as narrow as it looks … 14 years ago when our daughter got married on this stretch of beach, there was a wide dune line between the houses and the sea … now the dunes are mostly gone and there is a “beach replenishment” project underway, pumping offshore sand onto the beach to widen and stabilize it … lucky us that the work began the week after we left, as that certainly would have put a damper on our vacation!
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As a famous Australian might have said – crikey! Good timing!
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Glad you’re back with your senses. It’s weird not having them isn’t it! That location looks ideal to me. I may add it to my want to visit list. Removing all that stitching was so worth it, a lovely piece.
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We have long loved Avon, having vacationed there for over 30 years … but the beach has changed so much over time and I feel honor-bound to say I can’t be sure what the replenishment program will do, either for better or for worse …
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absolutely love the combination of plain linen and Deb’s colourful fabrics
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I wanted to frame each bit of dyed cloth, a miniaturized gallery I suppose
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