Tapestry Update

Once a month the little group of us from Sussex Stitchers still get together to do our bit of weaving. You'll remember I started with this - which has a few nice bits, but is basically about learning various techniques. 

I enjoy the colours, and they have a relationship with the photo collage that I started with, but the forms are uneven and don't relate to the design.

"Life is for learning"

Here is where my current piece has got to - shown upside down, as that will be the orientataion when it comes off the loom.

loosly based on the Nazar symbol, but there will be more below. Shapes symbolic of house and home if I have the space.

I'm rather pleased with it so far, though looking at the bottom, lighter area, I can see that I need to rework it to cover the warp better. I either need to loosen the tension on my weft thread or use a slightly narrower weft. I'll see which works, and refer you to the quote above :-)

The coming of green

The first swirl of green has rushed in on the band of blue above the birds

Does it grow from, or fly into the moon?

is its source perhaps the dark moon on the other side?

who can tell,

all we know is htat green is precious, it signifies life

a change of colour and a new moon

Did I mention in the plan that, as well as stitching by the phases of the moon, I am also going to change some of the colours I am using according to the seasons? No? I thought not. I'm hoping this isn't going to be one "rule" too many in this project, but we are moving into Spring now, so yesterday I drew off a series of greens going from darks to lights. 

Half of my selection of threads will continue the same throughout the year, relecting the turning from dark to light of the moon, but the rest will change. I am thinking reds, browns and golds during Autumn, they seem appropriate, but am still puzzling about summer; perhaps shades of purple? What do you think? It could be yellow for the summer sunshine, but it's hard to go really dark with yellow, unless I use the Autumn colours. So, some thinking to do while I enjoy a lovely range of warm and cool greens as spring progresses and the earth begins to give of her bounty.

Here's where I am

And here's where the Moon is

a bit of a catch up

Well, I may not have been blogging, but I have kept up with the stitching and am now moving through my second moon phase, past the last quarter, delving down into the dark again. This feels appropriate as I lost a much loved Aunt two weeks ago; readers of my other blog will have met Cecil. She would have been 92 next birthday and was one of my inspirations to start stitching. We shared interests in gardening and stitchy things, and when she was still active in the WI I always envied her trips to Denman College for stitching tuition.

So here is the current state of my year of stitching project

Lots of different stitches

Dark and light keeping pretty much in balance

Watching what everyone else is posting via the Facebook group is a real pleasure; there is just so much variety there. Also little snippets of people's lives and thoughts as they comment on what they are stitching and why.

Beautiful that we can unite in such a lovely occupation in the face of all that the world throws at us.