I wanted to do another pillow cover, this time with something I don’t usually use: all new cloth from Stitch in Dye, gifted by Meg last Christmas. The colors were reminiscent of New Mexico, so I tore strips and patches and began to baste them down with thoughts of the petroglyphs at La Cieneguilla in Santa Fe …
But it looked too orderly compared to the real thing …
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 …