A Quick Stitchy Update

Tori's (koolkookykreatures) postcard stitch along prompt for February is Zodiac Mind Warp. That really threw me for a loop. Tori said we could use anything from astrology to astronomy. My mind went first to the Chinese year of the dragon but I didn't feel up to stitching a dragon. Nor did I have any dragon imagery on fabric that would fit into the 4" x 6" format. When I turned to astronomy I came up with something I could do:

Sirius, the Dog Star. 😁 The background is a single piece of quilter's cotton (with sparkles!). Sirius was cut from another print, laid over a piece of felt, and then blanket stitched in place. Simple but effective. 

The theme for week 5 of K3n's weekly stitch journal was "Hidden Histories, Untold Stories." This was from a show catalog from an exhibit in the Victoria & Albert Museum. Kathryn used English paper piecing to make a single flower shape. Her templates were cut from copies of old letters or documents, thus the hidden history. Hexies to fit onto a 4.5" square was too fiddly for me. I chose to use a layer of feed sack cotton over a handwritten synopsis of my family's history. There was a hole already in the fabric, which I stitched around to create an eyelet. Then I made a couple more holes and stitched around them. I basted the fabric onto my paper, hiding most of the history (more than I intended as it turned out!). 

English paper piecing speaks to Kathryn's English heritage. My ancestors were all laborers, mostly working the land. I feel like the feed sack fabric speaks to my heritage. 

For the first official week of February Kathryn invited us to work with those types of fabrics that can be challenging: anything slippery, sheer, ravelly, thick, etc. She encouraged us to "listen to the fabric" and work intuitively. I found a piece of satin, a couple of silks, a velvet, and a loosely woven scrap to work with. 

 There were tears in that blue silk. I just tacked them down with a matching floss. That green velvet moved as I cross stitched it in place. I decided to leave the scraps in the shape they came to me rather than trimming them. The tan woven scrap covers up a gap between the velvet and the yellow satin. Another piece of silk was stitched on top. Then the sheer with the turquoise rectangle went on top of the yellow satin. Finally, I rolled a narrow strip of organza and couched it in place. I'm pleased with the result. Surprised, actually, that I had that wide range of fabric types that fell into a cohesive color palette!