Retrospective (7/8/2016)
Patch #185 Painted bunting
I almost didn't include these pictures because they're hard to make out through the window, but the first is a painted bunting leaning down to take a drink on the edge of the bird bath ...
after which he sits up to show his red breast ...
Original Post
Today I got to stitch together a week's worth of patches (June 13-19) ...
And while my "Retrospective" process of posting patches on the day they commemorate as well as the day they are actually made may be confusing, it works for me.
Did I really just write that? Oh heck, just click "Retrospective" in the Index to see what I mean (there are 50+ and counting).
In any case, my first patch today was a take on the Shark Attack, which is the Outer Banks version of the Shirley Temple cocktail. Just take one rubber shark, fill with grenadine, then pour into lemonade (see the June 17 post for action shots) ...
I thought this appliqué would be a cinch after yesterday's fiddle-y creek map, but it turned out that the fine cotton cloth and long smooth lines were challenging. I ended up outlining the edges in Jude Hill's split backstitch, which restored a semblance of smooth line-ness.
Next up was my birthday patch, which I originally envisioned as a take on the "Food is love" t-shirts Don got for the whole family. But as I cruised through the pictures on my phone, I came to this one taken on June 18 as we drove the last few miles to the beach house ...
I had taken the picture as James Taylor sang Line 'em up on our mix CD, imagining the poles as ever so many candles. Not that I was fixated on my 60th birthday. Ha!
Anyway, with thoughts of bojagi/pojagi playing in my head, I stitched some blue and green linen together and then did a felled seam in the middle. Sadly, it's hard to see on the back due to all the subsequent stitching ...
but once I learn a technique, I do have a tendency to look for opportunities to use it (and if you have a hammer in your hand, everything looks like a nail, right?)
And when you're turning over a decade, everything looks like a candle ...
One last thought (well, two actually). As I looked at the birthday patch finally stitched to its neighboring patches, my mind went punny on me. First, how the patch had ended up between a shark and a heart place ...
and second, that I loved how the rubber (shark) met the road.
