Mother Sew Dear

That is the name of one of the Precious Moments figurines, and I always think of my mother when I see that one. As I’ve mentioned here before, she was quite the seamstress. She still has her Singer sewing machine, though she doesn’t use it now.

Multi-media art is very new to me, and though I am terribly inexperienced, I do enjoy my attempts. Recently I decided to “tackle” a canvas—sometimes there are too many elements for a tag! I had an 8x10 stretched canvas on hand and decided to make that the platform for a sewing theme project to take to Mother soon, hoping it will cheer her, in her illness.

First, I covered the canvas with gesso. I painted the edges of the frame with Making Memories Cranberry acrylic paint. Then I covered the canvas with Studio matte medium and laid an actual pattern down, scrunching it up to make wrinkles.

Then I stamped a couple of sewing theme impressions onto pattern material (using Ranger Archival Cobalt), gently tore the edges around the images, and used medium to apply them. I liked the double thickness of the pattern pieces, and so then tore strips of pattern and glued them down all over, as a collage. (Thanks to Marjie Kemper for sending me some authentic patterns to work with!) Probably the greatest challenge of the entire project was trimming the excess pattern material from the edges. I’m NOT a good cutter!

For the focal point of the canvas, I used a tag that I had made a few weeks ago, swapping out the flowers from the original tag (I was never happy with them). I added a flower from my stash, and I love the Wendy Vecchi sewing machine element. Thinking of the sewing notions Mother always had on hand, I added some measuring tape, buttons and ric-rac.

One of my favorite passages of Scripture is Proverbs 31, and the description of the “virtuous woman” in that reference well describes my mother. So, I pulled a portion of that reference that is relevant to sewing.

 

So, Mother, if you’re reading this, we’ll have to find a place to display this, next time I visit!