Many years ago, I committed what was to become a life-long mea culpa: I broke a blue glass Art Deco vase that belonged to my mother. She handed the albatross to me and asked me if I could pull the plastic flowers out that were quite firmly wedged in place. Of course, coming from Mother, this would not be an easy thing to do, but I had not yet lived long enough to understand this.
I still remember standing in the little laundry room at the back of the house, trying to understand why the (stupid) plastic flower on the (even more stupid) wire stem wouldn't come out of the (beautiful cobalt blue) vase's narrow opening, and I tugged at it, turned the flower, tugged again-- and the vase broke into pieces in my hands. The break disclosed the truth: the stem was a very long one, so Mother had simply folded it back on itself and stuffed it in the vase. The end of the stem caught on one of the bulb-shapes of the vase and could not have been extracted without x-raying the vase, then having the Bomb Squad come in with intricate tools to work the wire out.
The drama that followed this little scene made an indelible impression on my younger self, and one day decades later, I began to embroider blue vases. None of these stitched vases looked like The Blue Vase I so vividly remembered, but photo realism was not the point of applying needle and thread to linen. I never put all the ensuing pieces in one place, never "collected" them on a wall. They are scattered through my house, and occasionally I come across one in the studio stored in a box of old work. I numbered them, at first, and there were more than thirty pieces before I stopped numbering. Some I cannibalized for other projects, some were made into greeting cards (but not for my mother), so they are lost to me. I will post pictures of these little pieces as I come across them, and maybe they will finally be together, if only in the world of the internet!
These pieces, however, I do have, and I begin my exhibit: The piece at the top of the page, "Sansevieria" was first posted in 2010, but as it is part of the series, I include it here.
Below is the first. I remember carrying it in the pocket of my jacket, along with a needle and a little clutch of DMC matte cotton that had been cut into 12 or 14 inch lengths. I would work on it as I walked downtown at lunchtime, in traffic when I was stopped at a light for 45 minutes at a time . . . in all the odd moments in a busy life of wife and mother with more than one job.
These two were done using more scraps from the same piece of very loose, rough linen as the first. Once it came to filling the vases with flowers, the rayon bullions couldn't be stitched while walking in downtown Atlanta, and I needed good light and a quiet place to work.
This rather mis-shapen piece is a combination of Machine and hand embroidery with vintage cotton appliqué. The rusted ground cloth was from a flurry of rusting fabrics I did in 2012.
The Blue Vase needed a break, so this one was called "Blue Vase on Holiday." It is on hand-made felt with tassels, beads, stitch, and the vase itself was cut from another Blue Vase piece that hadn't worked very well, then applied to this one. I always thought the vase had chosen a far and cold country for this trip-- there seems to be ice and pale sunlight in the felt, icicles dangling from a lower corner.
Next is one of my first machine embroidery experiments. I did not know how to set up my old Viking for free-motion embroidery, and I don't know if there was even such a name as that for this work. The metallic and rayon threads are stitched on a piece of commercial felt, and with the beads and the funky stitched framing, it is a glitzy little piece-- yet, it is not the size of the palm of my hand!
As the Knoxville Freestylers are beginning a study on drawing with a sewing machine, I did a quick machined piece for a demonstration. This latest Blue Vase is on a piece of hand-made felt.
This, however, may be my favorite in the Blue Vase series, which I back-stitched and titled, "Blue Vase in Black and White."
I will come across more pieces, or at least I hope so, and when I do, I'll update this post with pictures of those pieces. Meanwhile, enjoy!
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