Inspired By Silk & Leather
In April of 2007, I was cruising through my favorite used book stores and came upon a text titled Silk & Leather; Splendid Attire of Nineteenth-Century Central Asia. It was the book published to accompany the exhibition at the Textile Museum in Washington, DC.
Inside it's 36 pages are photos of some really spectacular Central Asian clothing and accessories. The central motif on the front of the book was gorgeous and the specific inspiration for the design on my project. The motif itself is the central motif on the back of a man's caftan, silk embroidery on doeskin. The coat dates from the second half of the 19th century and comes from Kazakhstan, one of the three areas I'm most attracted to in terms of Central Asian motifs.
This particular project was executed on fulled wool with perl cotton during the many times I waited in the ferry line, was riding the ferry back and forth from Seattle to Bremerton, and was waiting on something to do with my house and moving, thus it's been dubbed the 'moving' pouch. It was finished just after I officially moved from Seattle to Bremerton in early July and was one of the first projects to make it into my 50 for 50th year portfolio as it was started virtually the day after the starting date.
The process by which this project was created is pretty simple; fulled wool (100% wool content is best) is cut into various shapes and appliqued on to a larger piece of fulled wool (which I usually cut into the final shape so that I can design around that). I then use perl cotton in various colors to tack things down and decorate the face of the proejct. Often I'll use only one or two stitches, most of the time those are chain and stem stitch.
Once the embroidery and any other embellishment is finished, I flat-line the pouch and bind the edges. Then I'll either call it good or add beaded fringe, also made up of perl cotton.