Honouring work done

It's been a while since I've mentioned this wonderful treasure that came my way earlier in the year. Since you last saw it I have been working away at "consolidating". Getting all the unfinished edges finished, sewing lots of little while hexagons to add to the edges to get to a clean starting point, taking our endless paper hexagons so I have templates to paper piece around, sewing lots of colourful flowers so I have a stock to begin adding in my own contributions. You can see them making rainbow in the box below

So, having got the point where there is a boundary of white around what has been done so far, I was advised that it is usual to have some way of marking where one maker ceased and another began. This struck me as an excellent idea; the piecing that has been done so far is so fine and I am trying to achieve the same quality, but my aesthetic with colour is bound to differ from hers. So, without doing something too obvious that would intrude on the rhythm of the overall design (assuming I do actually finish it), I have decided to run a single line of stem stitch around the white edges to show where her flowers end and mine begin. You can see it below, skirting round the purple and blue and green, marking the transition that spans 13 years and a whole generation; the originator of this was my Mum's generation. It makes me think of edges and boundaries and maps, I don't quite know why.

I am still stitching every day, amongst all the other projects on the go. A quiet task that can be inventive, when choosing, cutting and stitching the fabrics for the flowers, or quietly undemanding, when stitching white on white; hexagons around paper, hexagons to other hexagons, or rhythmic stem stich to mark the place one stopped and another started. Honouring her work as I move forward with my own.

Focus

Yes, focus, I could really do with more!

I have been absent from here for some time, just being busy really. I have several projects on the go - never giving quite enough time to any of them, but hoping to get more than one thing finished by giving each at least some time. So there is the Mona Lisa project with my Embroiderers' Guild group. We have chopped her up into 25 rectangles and have each taken one to work on with whichever technique we feel suitable. I have her forehead. Just about to start cutting out organza shapes to get the colour of her skin before stitching that and finishing her hair.

Then there is my Mesopotamia project at Studio 11 - very slow stitch, but I am thinking about it all the time; how to express what catches my interest about the subject, how to be creative with ideas as well as images in stitch and cloth. The two rivers, Tigris and Euphrates are gradually flowing down the hanging I'm working on at the moment.

and towns are popping up along the way - in this case, Dur Sharrukin, Nineveh and Nimrud

Also, there is my patchwork - that monthly class which a little group of us are attending where we are learning all the basic skills in a nine patch quilt with borders. Just the borders and quilting to do now!! Only a little bit behind!!!

And recently I acquired,  or perhaps took over responsibility for the most wonderful piece of English Paper Piecing, a Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt, part finished, left to a friend by her godmother. The friend feels she can't finish it so it has been sitting on the top of her wardrobe making her "feel guilty" for the past 13 years.  It is double bed size, and I have fallen in love with it.

There are odd edges that need finishing before I can get to grips with how to proceed. There are also lots more hexies to be cut and stitched round the templates, template papers to be removed from the completed bits of piecing, flowers to be pieced and decisions to be made.

Such inventive fussy cutting.

I have no idea how long finishing will take, but it's a daily bit of quiet stitching that does my soul good.

On top of all that, I am now part way through a ten week course on the history of Mesopotamia - part way through and falling behind! Falling behind because we have been away for three long weekends in the past seven weeks, doing very enjoyable family things with my dear heart's family. This last weekend we were in Kassel for a very joyful wedding. The weather was toasty, the sun shone, the corn poppies were blooming

and the church roof threw back the light to the sky

Then this post popped into my side bar of places I enjoy.

How to have more focused hours in your day

Wonderful advice, but will I take it?

Life is full.