I am full to overflowing after our third journey to New Mexico. It will surely take a fair bit of time to tell it all here, but suffice it to say we hope go back someday …
In the meantime, I’ve decided to complete some unfinished projects, the better to clear the deck so I can get started on E’s coverlet.
And so, Remember 2021will be retitled Remember (some of) 2021, as it will only cover January through July.
I had planned to keep working on the base for My Heart’s Compass,but I couldn’t resist doing a bit of embellishment today.
But first, the back story. Six years ago, in 2014, I had just finished Jude Hill’s online class Considering Weave, which is where I first met many of the Kindred Spirits.
Don had turned 60 in June that year and we were also celebrating 40 years since our first blind date. So our daughters arranged for us to spend several days at a Santa Fe B&B in late October.
Simply put, we fell in love with New Mexico. And among many fond memories made there was our visit to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, where I first saw Door through Window (1956)
and one of her Sky above Clouds paintings …
Two years later, in 2016, I stitched an homage I called Georgia’s Window as part of celebrating of my own 60th. It hung in a window at our Hill Country house and has since become part of My Heart’s Compass bed cloth.
Which brings me to the here and now.
I decided I wanted to stitch some of “Georgia’s clouds” next to Georgia’s Window. So I printed some cropped bits of Sky above the Clouds IV, sketched a few, and tried some stitch samples until I made one I liked …
The winning technique involved cutting bleached muslin into rounded rectangles …
pinning and basting the “clouds” onto My Heart’s Compass …
and then satin stitching over the raw edges with two strands of DMC floss …
I’ve already written this post once, but my mobile version of Blogger on my old iPhone 5s wouldn’t publish it. So, back to publishing on the laptop … for as long as that lasts. And ugh … I hate formatting on the PC … the mobile app was soooo much easier.
“I found it at an estate sale at a gorgeous mountain home where the owners had collected amazing Southwestern flavored artworks including fiber pieces & western antiques. Not sure how old it is but I’m guessing at least 50 to 75 years old. The weave style looked Mexican or possibly Native American and I think it was used as a small book cover. I hope you will be able to find a use for it. Possibly bind your own book to put inside …”
Well that answered the question I had about the sewn-under ends …
And got me thinking how best to showcase it …
I liked the idea of a book, so I played with the idea of making pages out of used tea bags …
And then, recalling our trek to northern New Mexico last summer, I hit on the perfect idea: the petroglyphs that we saw in Santa Fe …
So now I’m playing with watercolors and gouache, trying to find the perfect combination …
As Rachel Maddow is wont to say, “Watch this space … “
