Well, Sharon has done it again and given us a great challenge for June.
Using a picture of a stash of old sinks (pic on the top left), she’s drawn out this palette for us to use as we think about the possibilities of stories from our stashes.
Since my stash comes from my travels all over the country and other parts of the world from many years, and has traveled with me to many places, travel stories came to mind immediately.
That, on top of the fact that we are packing this week to travel to yet another new place to live, has led me to choose some threads and a piece of linen out of my stash to work on. The piece will have to be small and portable since it will be worked on during the month of June while we’re traveling and in limbo waiting to move into our house in July.
I pulled every black, blackish, gray, olive green, dark brown, and gold brown DMC floss in my stash (they’re not all in the picture). I thought there was brown in the palette, but printed out it looks like olive green. So, since Sharon also provided a bunch of other colors, I may include a selection of several browns and grays as well as olive greens and gold/browns from this expanded palette.
Using the theme of travel stories, I also pulled from my stash of quilt pattern books a quilt block design called Snail Trail. This month is going to be a slow travel as we drive across the country, attend a conference, and then wait for the final move. Incidentally, another name for this block is Virginia Reel, appropriate since we’re moving back to VA.
I’m not sure why, but Snail Trail tells the story for me of this kind of limbo. We’ve done it before during the twenty years my husband spent in military service. And I’ve wanted to use this pattern for a long time in some way. So here’s my chance. I’ve already thought of a title for the piece: Making Tracks.
The plan at this point is to enlarge the block to fit the piece of linen from the stash, do an outline in black (maybe), then fill each space in with blackwork stitches in the color palette. I haven’t done blackwork in a long time, and I don’t have any reference books on it, so I’ll be researching on line and probably designing some of my own stitch designs as well.
I’m packing into one of my project travel bags (the new ladybug one I just made) some graph paper, colored pencils, all the threads, the linen and needles so I can work on it while we’re traveling and waiting.
