An explosion of riches

I used the last of the little bit of extra money I made this summer, and bought fabric. (To be honest I used a wee bit of credit as well). I ordered 20 fat quarters of African fabric over the internet. These are from Uganda. The pieces I've made with the African fabric have sold well, and they are certainly eye-catching in my booth. So it would be nice to have a couple for the sales coming up this fall. So having done that, I needed some calmer "filler" fabrics to add to the mix for my piecing. On my travels, I also finally found some appropriate beads to go with the African fabrics. Finding any insertion beading has proven difficult, but I finally checked out a store half way across the city and not only did they have them, they were on sale at 50% off!

The Gloria Loughman book has been put aside. I have been sorting my library and came across a book on stumpwork dragon flies by Jane Nichlas. All of a sudden the idea for the Acceptance collage for my Serenity pent-tych was there, and I've been working on that. The stump work is hand embroidery and it's been along time since I've done much of that. I can certianly see that my fine hand sewing skills have deteriorated over the time away from the work, but I think I can finish the dragon flies well enogh for the use I have in mind for them.

The Serenity pent-tych has been in the works for a couple of years. It is based on the five concepts expressed in the Serenity Prayer: the concept of a Higher Power, Serenity, Acceptance, Courage, and Wisdom. Each piece is entirely separate, and each is based on a different colour scheme, but they are of the same size and similar techniques, and each concept is expressed in a distinctive Celtic Rune. But developing five distinctly different but similar desings has been a challenge. I was discussing this yesteday with a knowledgeable friend who suggested researching the symbolism of each concept via the Internet. Duh! Wish I'd thought of it sooner. Regardless, I have decided to use dragon flies as a symbol of acceptance, as they, as a species, have accepted everything nature has thrown at them over milions of years--and survived.