March/April BJP

With Spring upon me I was unable to choose just one Springtime deity, so I decided that this project would be for all Spring goddesses and gods! Since it also took longer I made it for both March and April. It's a multistrand necklace with colors inspired by the many green shades of this season, accented by occasional wildflower hues. I used different sizes of glass seed beads, from 11 to 6, small Swarovski crystals, and gemstone beads of jade, peridot, serpentine, green kyanite, seraphinite, prehnite, citrine, and green tourmaline. Included in one of the pictures is the Pestemon heterophyllus that inspired the combination of purple and blue in one part of my necklace!
(posted for Jill)

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!

Black Oak - April BJP

Here's my April project - an unfurling Black Oak (Quercus kelloggii) leaf! These trees are really amazing when they leaf out in the Spring, and I've included a picture of the tree that inspired me here. This month is usually the peak of the wildflower season in this part of California, so I included the multicolored beads in specific colors I've observed in flowers. I liked the idea of including the fabric design in my beading, so I did the viney things in multi-hued greens. These greens recall all the grasses and leaves that accompany the flowers. I also got a chance to use some interestingly textured bugle beads that Mom kindly shared with me!

Note: This entry says posted by robin michelle but it's Jill's April project. I just posted for her because she's a luddite. . .

Big Leaf Maple - March BJP

For my March project I chose Big Leaf Maple (Acer macrophylum) which begins to leaf out at the beginning of the month. I'm always a bit anxious around Spring because this is when it starts to get unpleasantly warm (for me that's over 70F!) and I know that soon it will be Summer and the rain will stop. But Spring is really a special time of year in this area - the Winter-dormant plants are all starting to leaf out and grow, the Summer-dormant plants are still actively growing, and the wildflowers begin their incredible flower display. It's one big swirling explosion of green and flowers!

So I went out to a local hillside where I found my maple leaf beginning to unfurl. It was a translucent green tinged with a coppery color - I used these colors in my outline. The circle in the middle that is half yellow and half white is representational of the Vernal Equinox - half of the Moon and half of the Sun for the balancing of day and night. To create this I strung the beads and sewed them down into a spiral shape.

While walking on the trail looking for my maple leaves I came across trillium (Trillium chloropetalum) and gooseberry (Ribes menziesii) blooming in the woods! The trillium is an incredible woodland bloomer on a stalk about 18" high with three huge leaves topped with three sepals and three petals. I stitched these on the left of the leaf. I just included the sepals and the petals, which can be white, maroon, or rose-pink. These are depicted as you would see them looking straight down at the flower. The gooseberry is a thorny shrub and the flowers hang down from the branches like little fuchsias. The gooseberry flower is on the right-hand side - the flowers are smaller than the size I stitched them. I used different bead shapes and thread for this one and I think it looks pretty realistic. I was actually a bit surprised by how realistic it turned out! So there's my project - inspired by a Springtime woodland!

Note: This entry says posted by robin michelle but it's Jill's March project. I just posted for her because she was having computer problems. 

Bridget's Leaf Garden

February - for this month I wanted to incorporate the celebration of the the feast day of the Celtic Goddess Bridget - Imbolc - with the seasonal changes here. I had been reading about this holiday in a wonderful book called "Kindling the Celtic Spirit" by Mara Freeman. I also went back to some the original source material in Alexander Carmichael's "Carmina Gadelica". After this I decided to use the quartz crystal to represent Bridget and surround Her (in beads) with the first flowers of the season. So I looked around and saw a lot of lupines (I'm not sure which species) and a few California poppies (Escholtzia californica) in bloom. The Lupines produce beautiful spikes of blue flowers, whereas the poppies are brilliantly orange and chalice-shaped. I also included the little white beads for Milkmaids (Dentaria californica) which I've also seen at this time of year in some of the oak woodlands further inland. But of course I needed a leaf shape! At this time of year the California Buckeyes (Aesculus californica) begin to leaf out. Imagine a bare tree with silvery branches and each branch is tipped with green flame. This is the drama of buckeye leafout! But after searching out my tree (I'll post on this later) I realized that a simple outline of the leaf would not convey the experience of the leaves bursting out. So instead I used the shape of the entire tip with all the leaves coming out. Then as I stitched I also wanted to incorporate the design on the fabric. As it turned out it's somewhat abstract, but I hope still representative enough anyway!

Work in Progress

I'm going to share this blog with my daughter, Jill, and include her stitching projects also. This is a project she has been working on for about a year called Convent's Herbal Garden. It is close to being finished and, as you can see, really looks great!