Our Main Street DDA is doing a Derby Day party and has asked artists to decorate a hat which will be raffled off at the event. I delivered mine today. The hat had a plain black ribbon band so I went to my fabric stash to see what I had. I found something black and white with a touch of red and blue that had horses on it.
Okay, that's it; however, all I had were small scraps. So more digging, lots of black and white scraps, some heavy duty interfacing make a pretty nice bow. The center, a rhinestone pin... did I mention I sometimes think maybe I'm a hoarder. My house doesn't look like it but my studio sure does. I have never been one to wear a rhinestone pin yet I have several, probably my mother's or my grandmother's or Ed's mother's... who knows. I have them and one worked perfectly as the center of that black and white bow.
That's why I save all that stuff, one never knows when one may need it.
Once the hat was delivered I did some more stitching and thinking about stitching. Actually I was thinking about something I read that Dee Thomas said about contemporary embroidering and her stitching, "Perhaps it is decorative, a damning term in the art world, but I would rather people liked it for what they see and what they think about it, rather than as a concept that needs explaining."
She also mentioned not thinking she wanted to stitch because when she was learning she never did it perfectly and hated it. I could relate which got me to thinking about Mother. And the more I thought about it the more I realize that given time, she would have been in the contemporary camp.
Yes, her stitches where perfect, she was a certified Master Embroiderer. However, her work wasn't traditional... Instead of flowers of a white pillow case, she did perfect stitches between the lines of the pillow ticking and stitched it into a purse. I have no desire to do those perfect stitches, I am not nearly as patient as she was; however, I don't think she'd mind if she was still with us.
