Sunday, July 09, 2006

The final work

Here's how the latest prayer shawl, "Tree of Life," looked today at the end of church. My dear friend Anne is holding it up for me -- I was too short to hold it for anyone else to get a full shot of it.

I added a few more details to it late last night. I decided it needed a dove, so I made one. It really does look more like a bird in person because you can see the three-dimensional wings -- they don't cause enough of a shadow in photos to give you the necessary detail.

I also added more flowers along the bottom which helped me hide some adjustments I made around the "roots" area to try to straighten things up a bit. I also went back over parts of some branches to adjust the shading -- what I had hoped would look like shadowing before just looked stupid. I like it much better now. (That's what duplicate stitching can do for a piece.)

Let's see, what else... Oh yes, I did not want to put a fringe on this piece. And customarily the congregation has participated by tying knots in the fringes. To compensate for that, I put strands of yellow yarn in the centers of the flowers so people would have something to tie. And I left some "stems" on some of the flowers for more tying purposes. A good trim of the loose ends will neaten everything up.

So it is now done and out of my hands. On to the next project -- I think I'll go back to a couple of straightforward, simple prayer shawls for a while instead of competing with myself for "fancy" stuff. I was just inspired to create this design for the particular recipient.

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7 comments:

manyhartz said...

absolutely beautiful

Erudite Redneck said...

Very cool.

And it would make a FANTASTIC Halloween costume. (thought inspired by those tootsies stickin' out from the bottom). :-)

Erudite Redneck said...

The long-lost phrase "stems and seeds" also comes to mind for some reason, but I'll spare you. :-)

Anonymous said...

I have thought and thought and thought and I still can't think of anything appropriate to say about a prayer shawl with two feet.

Trixie said...

Well, Dr., the important thing is you tried...

SBB said...

Wow!

Anonymous said...

How about it looks warm and mobile?