- Stitching a little peace (flag)

I'm starting in the middle since this piece looked better before it was completed. It's a 1" x 3" replica of the Sow/Sew Peace flag that I sent to the Solace Project, made with the same materials.

My first attempt, alluded to but not pictured earlier, was pretty bad ...

The inked-in letters were obscured by the fuzz from linen weft threads picked out of the cloth used in the original flag. They simply didn't have enough twist to stand up to the abrasion from the warp threads. So I rotated the whole warp, leaving the discarded effort on the end of the shadow box loom.

But the rotation opened up a pennant-like stretch, so I tried again ...

After weaving a light indigo cotton into the warp, I created a tiny pennant from the cotton tape used on the original flag, backstitched the lettering, and twisted the frayed ends into miniature "ties" ...

I used thread pulled from the blue chambray to stitch the "sky" and tried again to use linen threads pulled from cloth to stitch block-like shapes onto the flag. Lesson (finally) learned: raveled linen fabric does not work as a weft source, even though I've had good luck using unraveled linen knit thread.

The end result was a reasonable facsimile so I don't know that I'll make another attempt, but the piece doesn't stand up to close scrutiny.

It did, however, make for an interesting way to while away a rainy day.