On Maybe, Maybe not

As I sat and stitched around the letters M A Y to mark the month many thoughts about this lockdown month and the connotations of the word itself swirled about in my brain. But I will not bore you with my mullings and musings except to say that it seemed appropriate to capture the name in negative space in my kantha sampler for the month of May.

Kantha sampler for May 2020 (23 x 28 cm; 9″ x 11″)

The joy of making a sampler is that one is experimenting and therefore it does not matter if the result is not perfect. And then there are the small surprises along the way — such as the patterns that are formed when the stitching along two angled lines meets. I used the bricking stitch to outline and echo the letters until there was a stitched rectangle around the letters. For the border I used the blocking stitch. (For more detailed explanations about these stitches, please go to a previous post, On Learning the Gentle Art of Kantha with Dorothy Tucker.)

Another small surprise was to see that the back of the sampler spelled the word Y A M (which is the mirror image of M A Y).

Because there is no batting between the layers of cloth there is nowhere to bury the knots, so here is the back view, thread tails and all.

More on Containment

A couple of posts back I announced that I had finished with the the theme of Containment and would not be making any more textile works on the subject. As it turned out, the first exercise in the very exciting Stitch Club series, being run by TextileArtist.org, was to make containers to hold objects. The workshop was run by UK Artist Debbie Lyddon, who is inspired by the Norfolk coast. She showed us how to make containers containing eyelets. The tutorial was much richer than my sparse description and I had great fun painting canvas and then using it to stitch three containers, using cord and wire to stabilise the peepholes and top rim.

Three containers, contained in a little boat

The three vessels of varying sizes contain precious objects given to me by special people. Because they do not stand upright; and because I had seen some beautiful boat shapes made by other members of the Stitch Club; and because I had extra fabric and wire, I decided to make a boat for them.

This photograph gives a better view through the peepholes of the contents : a heart shaped shell, a polished rose quartz stone, and a palm stone.