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Rainbow Squares
A couple of years ago I joined the newly re-formed branch of the Suffolk West Embroiderers’ Guild. During this year (2017-18) the branch is running a project where each member embroiders a square in a specified colour – “Rainbow Squares”. The colours progress in the same sequence as the rainbow so the first square was red.
I wasn’t very excited by the prospect of decorating a square with red stitches but I soon realised that I could make an eight square centimetre, four page booklet and attach that to an appropriately coloured square.
I made the cover from torn scraps of fabric bonded to some felt, then integrated them with machine embroidery. I covered this with a piece of muslin which I had coloured several years ago when EAST had a weekend with Ruth Issett. I folded the cover in half, then added four pages inside which had a love poem, “Echo” by Carol Ann Duffy, embroidered on them.
The next square, for November, was to be orange. I made a list of orange things – a colour, a drink, a fruit, a principality, a butterfly etc. – and embroidered these onto scraps of orange silk which I applied to a zig-zag book. This I put inside a cover which had been made as before except with scraps of orange fabric.
The December square was yellow. I didn’t realise until I began to sew what a difficult colour yellow is to work with and how few fabrics and threads I owned in that colour. Nevertheless, I had decided that the book was to have images of shells inside so I raided my supplies.
The square to make for January is green so, hopefully, I will have more items to play with and the book will probably contain leaves – unless I get any better ideas.
I wish you all a very happy, healthy and productive 2018.
Susan
