May BJP

Well May is finished and I'm officially caught up and working on June! May was a very difficult month for me. It felt long and dark and endless so that's what I was trying to show in my project for this month.

I had originally planned to use all black beads around the heart but something just wouldn't let me and I kept adding color so maybe it wasn't quite as dark as I thought. The heart in the middle is full of holes which is how I've felt but it's also anchored. I used red and white beads to hold it in place and it felt like I was trying to stitch up a fractured heart but I think it worked. The line of white beads is hope because I know there is still a lot and I just don't look in the right place sometimes. Why it snaked outside the borders I don't know - it just had a mind of its own. I did a close-up on the blue beads in the corner because they looked so pretty and sparkly!

This really seemed to have a mind of its own and took off in a direction I hadn't planned. Which I guess is what life does all the time. I think June is going to be brighter though!

Queen of the May

Another view of my project.


The Penstemon azureus whose hues inspired me.

This month is The May Queen in a Western Hawthorn Leaf! I've had this little Goddess spiral pendant for a very long time but since I don't really wear much gold-colored jewelery I never got around to incorporating Her into a necklace. But I love the design and the gold color is perfect to evoke the afternoon light through a verdant mixed evergreen forest in May. And May was especially verdant this year with above average rainfall! So I adorned my little May Queen with a bunch of green beads, with some Penstemon purple and blue colors as well. I also scattered some beads in those colors outside the leaf. Penstemons come in a range of colors but here I was inspired by Penstemon azureus. But the upper left represents a Clarkia unguiculata flower - the common name is Farewell to Spring! The model for my Western Hawthorn (Crataegus douglasii) leaf was the little hawthorn I bought this year at the native plant sale. It's the plant that you can see a bit of in the background! Anyway I had fun with this, but it was challenging to figure how to make the leaf margin look serrated. It was pretty simple to stitch, though, once I figured out how to do it - I think you can see from the picture what I did. The other problem when I first started was unexpected - I had trouble attaching the pendant because it's fairly heavy! But eventually persistence paid off and once I ran the thread through a few times it stayed put. And I love using these batik fabrics! The colors are so much fun to look at and work with. I'm also really liking using the interleaving paper to back these!