30" x 16"
Exhibited: 2000 Toronto Guild of Stitchery

The story of "Happy Mother's Day"

"Happy Mothers Day. I hope that you'll do something with this." said my daughter Wendy, handing me a beautifully wrapped gift.

Happiness is...getting a personally made, hand-dyed gift of perle silk threads in the colors of mustard, fuchsia, pink, and purple. I thought that Wendy was asking me to design an original needlepoint with the threads and that's what I did. Happiness is . . . . . shopping for a new stash of threads to enhance this amazing gift.

The piece that I designed has several components that make me feel happy.

-- I like to work on pieces that have a repeating theme yet each section is different in design. Each one of the twelve squares is of the same size, each has a similar horizontal flow, each has the same choice of color families and each one is different.

-- I love the challenge of creating order from many disparate parts. It's my collage thinking again.

-- Researching my stitchery books, I found Bargello designs that stimulated me to create needlepoint images in Bargello style patterns.

-- All of my favorite fibers were used, overdye, silk, cotton, velour, ultra suede, metallic, beads. The rule was that I must use some of Wendy's thread in each square. Being aware of creating a balance of color within the design, I decided to focus on the pinks and purple colour families and I saved the mustard colour for *The Kiss.

-- I loved creating silk ribbon roses. They added an element of height to the canvas. When done in overdye silk ribbon, each rose took on a slightly different appearance. Again I was repeating a theme yet it unfolded with some variety.

-- The outer border was stitched in two different very subtle shades of my favorite overdye cotton floss by Needle Necessity. I stitched with long stitches to allow the luster of the thread to create shadows and depth.

-- This piece is stitched on 18 mesh mono canvas so I was able to incorporate lots of detail.

Happiness is ...remembering the wonderful Mother's Day family dinner and the gift that inspired the happy creative hours.

*note: The Kiss can be seen in the Orchestral Gallery, Interpretations Room.

>Click within the stitchings to see the detail images: