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.

Charm School Week Three: Whitework

Charity

This week's homework was the A-Z of Whitework published by Country Bumpkin. This book covers EVERY type of whitework I can think of except for pulled work which they claim will be covered in a future book. This book is definitely worth the price of admission as it is a tremendous resource for many different types of stitches -- for whitework, for crazy quilting or any other type of surface embroidery. I saw stitches in this book that I have not seen in any other book...

For my charm this week, I decided to try cutwork. I had never made anything using traditional cutwork techniques in my life...with the exception of hardanger. Unlike hardanger which is stitched using a counted method, I tried my cutwork "freehand" on a old piece of linen I had. Well, I can see how cutwork might become rhythmical, and I did enjoy it...


But, it might take an entire table cloth's worth of practice before my stitches would begin to look more uniform...My stitches were a little wonky but I guess that's part of the charm of handwork *teehee hee

It was really fun when it was time to cut away the interior parts...


and to see the heart pop forward in relief...so sweet!


And, I did try a new stitch called "pin stitch" to attach the linen heart to a ribbon I used to back the charm. Pin stitch is used for appliqueing two pieces together in Madeira embroidery ( I just learned that! -- who knew??). I couldn't find an online reference to show you, sorry about that...but it was quite nifty because it leaves your stitching on the back very even-- I also added a bead to my thread while pin stitching and that saved me the extra step of beading...I could applique and bead at the same time. Nifty little stitch...I just might have to show it to you another time.

And I used a wide rayon ribbon, folded in half to back the linen heart (see, with ribbon, I don't have to worry about seams and I was running late)...


So, what I ended up with this week, is this sweet little charm called Charity. And I know a lot more about what's in my whitework book.


Next time, I'll be covering stumpwork in one of Jane Nicholas' books...I'm just not sure which one yet...And, it won't be next Tuesday but the Tuesday following, July14. Next week I'll be on Summer Break from Charm School.

That's good. I just might take me two weeks to figure out stumpwork...

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.