Winter Scroll

About the time Anne Brooke proposed the #12pagesofChristmas book in a tin project (see my SAL post) I knew my Summer scroll was coming to an end. The 12 Pages project wasn't yet clearly outlined. I thought I might like to do a Halloween/Days of the Dead version of the book project but that didn't happen. I'd still like to tackle that at some point. Instead, I began another stitch wrap/scroll. While I started it in late autumn technically, I'm referring to it as my Winter scroll because most of it will cover the winter months here in the Northern Hemisphere. This time I'm using a long, narrow strip of batting for the foundation. The Summer Scroll was stitched on a strip of muslin. 

The first panel is plain muslin with no embellishments. I still don't have any spools or bobbins on which to wrap these scrolls so I left that plain in case I needed it in the future for mounting purposes. Then I went into full autumn mode with this panel:

For what it's worth, all of the pictures in this post were edited quickly on my phone. My intention is to fill the center of that flower I made of lazy daisy stitches with a button. The green sprigs are fly stitches, and I added some seed beads.

The next panel was created around Thanksgiving time (end of November). 

It's actually two scraps from a single print that I butted up against each other. I just used simple straight stitches around the two images and to accent the bush in the foreground of the house. Eventually some beads will probably go into that bit of eyelet lace at the top of the panel. That's a short strip of sari silk peeking out from underneath the lace to help it show up better.

Next up is a circle I fussy cut from one of the flannels I used to make pillowcases for one of our granddaughters this Christmas. It's appliqued onto a piece of wool with some more fly stitches. The roses next to it is a bit of another flannel I bought for a pillowcase cuff but didn't use. It was a good place to practice my feather stitching though. 😊

And still in pillowcase mode, the skelly and candy canes was yet another pillowcase (I made five for her in total). I really liked how the bit of vintage lace echoed the snowflakes in the print. I added the five little hearts to represent all the granddaughters, the pink standing in for the newest addition. There's just basic straight stitching outlining the skelly and canes in the green background and then some white on top of the snowflakes to highlight them. Not sure more will be done to that section.

Next up is a scrap of a print to represent our acquisition of a Christmas tree on top of a print that represents the cloudy, stormy weather we had. Then I found a piece of black velvet onto which I stitched an assortment of beads leading to the star sequins. That's meant to represent the convergence of the two planets into what was known as the Christmas star. Below the star sequins I've attached two feathers my canary dropped recently just to fill the space without doing much to the velvet. 

Finally we have the latest additions to the scroll. I bought a packet of goodies from Tilly Rose some months back, and in it was the piece of fabric I've used to indicate the end of one year and the beginning of the new. It seemed perfect for the purpose as it's appropriately dark for 2020 and lightens up with hope for 2021. I've only just added all the white bits to the right of that. Anne has begun her #52tags project for 2021 (on Instagram and YouTube). Basically the plan is to do a little slow stitching and attach it to a regular shipping tag, one for each week of the year. I'm not participating in the strictest sense of the word but will be watching from the sidelines and probably incorporating many of her prompts in my own work one way or another. In this case, the prompt for the first tag was to restrict yourself to the use of white materials. Starting the new year with a clean slate as it were. I wanted to acknowledge the fact that the annual Tournament of Roses parade in Pasadena, CA had been cancelled this year due to Covid-19 so I inscribed that note on a strip of muslin to attach to my scroll. The muslin was so thin I decided to rip two strips to layer one on top of the other. At the time I thought I might stitch them together for stability. But I kind of liked the way they flutter. Then the insurrection of January 6 happened. Now that second strip of muslin will be inscribed to that effect. 

And underneath the two flags, more feather stitch practice. 

The rest of the stitching on the white section is just straight or tacking stitches. There are a couple of areas I want to do more on but this is as far as I've come as of this writing. 

Working this way has made me realize I've got more reorganizing of materials to do as the year progresses. That's one of those tasks I dread because you have to make a bigger mess than you already have before you can put things away more efficiently. Which takes time and energy that I'd rather spend actually stitching!