Serendipity, the power of taking a break, and progress – Whew!

In the studio and stitching away this week. That sounds like no big deal. But as I shared in my July art newsletter, I had six big artworks ready to be stitched in June and they proved unstitchable. And I mean unstitchable. I tried everything and the layers, the felt backing, whatever! just made it impossible to sew more than an inch without the thread breaking. So I let them sit, went to the Boundary Waters, and decided (with reluctance and with considerable pain) to just chuck them and start again.
But when I went to my studio, I had a cone of poly/cotton thread on the holder from fixing a piece of camping equipment. I took down from the design wall the piece I had been torturing with failed stitching attempts and gave it a whirl. All good to go now. So I’m a happy (and amazed!) camper now and have three pieces stitched and the fourth one (above) under the needle.

This is what the back looks like; I’m really just securing things at this point as I think about where to take them once this first stitching is done.

This is what the side table looks like when I’m working. I can’t say any of these threads are the dominant colors of the six pieces, but I like to have a lot of thread out while I’m working. Neatness optional.
















