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Earth and Turquoise
Oh wow…some days the piece just works! And I can tell it is working when I keep smiling from ear to ear as I pin it up on the design wall, step back and see how it’s going. And just because I’m truly wicked, I’m going to make you read before you get to see the picture!
Here’s how it began: A while back, I was surfing the web looking for quotations for a collaboration I’m working on. There are three of us working on pieces about the elements…earth, air/wind, fire, water and spirit. I found this one at www.bartleby.com which I just loved:
Earth and I gave you turquoise
when you walked singing
We lived laughing in my house
and told old stories
–N. Scott Momaday
He is described as a native American poet….born 1934 (does anyone know of him or his work? I’m curious to learn more….)
I noodled around with the idea, but while working out at Curves one day had this image of hands coming out of the earth, offering up the turquoise. In December, before the kids got out on vacation, I visited the bead shop in Damariscotta (yo eco!), and bought three real turquoise beads (maybe 3/8 inch or so large…lumpy rock-ish shapes, but polished) and some turquoise colored beads to use.
As I was photographing and tracing and sketching out hands, they morphed from coming out of the earth into offering up the Earth. Then, I was trying to figure out the edges (given the size of cloth I had for background (about 26×30) I wanted something simple and irregular…) I pinned up the green cloth, and decided to do only the sides. I ripped the fabric, then fused it, leaving the slightly frayed edges of the green un-fused. I *think* I’m going to stitch corn leaves and turn them into stalks of corn; with the native American connection, I keep coming back to the corn as symbol of the fruitfulness of the Earth. I’m thinking of using dark, muted green threads so that the leaves are subtle….what do any of you reading this think??? too much or OK?
The white lines you see are chalkmarks…I think I’m going to stitch some blue lines–breath–or wind?–and tuck the quotation into the wedge spaces between the air currents above the Earth. Finally, I’m going to stitch the turquoise nuggets and beads into the heavens above the earth. And I may add some dangly things or sticks top and bottom…hang from a stick (laced on with leather?) and have a stick hanging on the bottom, maybe with a few small rocks and feathers…will see…that may be too much “stuff” or it just might work…)
This time, I’m trying something different with the threadwork. Instead of doing all the stitching at the quilting phase, I’m doing it as free-motion embroidery, the way Ann Fahl describes in her book Coloring with Thread. This has a few great advantages: best of all, you don’t have to bury so many thread tails! Just knot off on the machine by stitching in the same place, and pull threads to the back (which my machine does for me—love those Janomes 6500 and 6600). If your tension is a wee bit off, it’ll be hidden by the batting (oooh, I didn’t really just confess that did I?). Less bulk to maneuver under the machine. When you outline quilt or do background work, the motifs—the planet and the hands, will pop more instead of being compressed across the entire surface by the stitching. The drawback is that you need to hoop or stabilize in some way to prevent unsightly puckering. For the long lines, hooping will be impossible, but it worked great for the hands and Earth.
Alas, I need to do some real “work”–finish the Christmas newsletter (ahem) and mail it, prepare two patterns, once for a private class I’m teaching at the end of the month and get in the mail Monday, open and hook up and use the new CD burner (a gift from a very generous internet friend from Quiltart, who had a “remaindered” one in the drawer after they upgraded their computers…bless you MH!) and the external hard-drive and back up my internal hard-drive regularly ….minor details like that. Sigh. I wanna work on this quilt….I’m a SO jazzed! Some days, it just works!