Sows' Ears

My granddad said you can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear, but as long as I have made things, since childhood, that has been my quest.  I painted a pueblo from red Georgia clay mixed with glue, on a board that had separated sheets of Xray film that mom brought home from her nursing job. Made jewelry from berries, roots and leaves and wished they wouldn't wilt so much.  This weekend, it rained like the tropics, so I settled down with my tin boxes of fabric scraps, old thread and sewing notions, and stitched till my hands hurt.  It was a lot like panting and drawing, and I enjoyed myself. The resulting textile assemblages came from an array of nearly exhausted sources, resuscitated for another spring: a feedsack cutter quilt, a shirt collar, the strap of a toddler's romper, silk, velvet, sewing thread, antique copper sequins, trim, and notions.  The rhinestone circles were cut from a burlesque costume and appliqued with the blanket stitch, the wild blue spirals from a feed sack print, the bee embroidered, not with floss, but with old sewing thread on wooden bobbins. The rhinestone piece is available in my Etsy shop, in time for spring.