My White Elephant

Mothers, daughters, aunts and grandmothers...they all stay together in the elephant family with the oldest, most experienced female taking the leadership role.  

The males leave during adolescence and either travel alone or form loosely-held herds...but the bonds within the male herd are not nearly as strong or as far-reaching as the female herd.

I feel some affinity toward those elephant groups of females...how they collectively protect their young and mourn for a loved one.

Here's a link to a great story in the Huffington Post where a female herd surrounded an elephant while she gave birth in order to protect her from predators.  How beautiful.

And crazy me, that's what I've been thinking about as I stitch this whitework elephant designed by Gary Clarke...

Our workshops with Gary continued (I wrote about the first class here) and we worked through an all white design that once again, played with the notion of layers.

The design is screenprinted on muslin...

And a base layer is created by tacking down various widths of cording and completing some base chain stitches and knots...

Then the whole lot is covered with gauze...

And you stitch around the cords and stitches so that the design appears in relief.  This is a close-up of Gary's model...

I placed my gauze on the bias to see how different it would appear.  There isn't that great of a difference and both ways appeal to me.  We use candlewicking thread for all of the embroidery and yet this style differs quite a bit from traditional candlewicking which is usually pure surface embroidery.

So far I'm absolutely loving this.  It's rhythm and repetition relaxes.   And the idea of sandwiching stitches and motifs between two fabrics is pretty neat.

I've had a collection box set aside for a future project...a Book of Wisdom.  My intention is for the entire book to be ecru and tone-on-tone.  My elephant is going to be included in my book...an old wise crone in the herd.  I'm thinking of changing things just a bit to make it my own...maybe mother of pearl or shells or...sequins?  I wonder what they would look like in the sandwich?

Whatever I decide, she's won my heart.  And so has the story of Shirley and Jenny...two elephants that were reunited at an elephant reserve after being separated for 20 years.  This story will move you and takes only 7 minutes to watch.

Elephants aside, Mrs. Rose is calling my name and her story needs to be told.  I'm moving on to finish her up in the next few weeks.

Looking forward to a few quiet days ahead and catching up with all of you.