a flowery message for the future (iron craft #18)

this week's Iron Craft challenge was "May Flowers".

there were so many possibilities for the theme, i contemplated making a quilt or apron out of flowered fabric, a painted art quilt, flower brooches or hair clips, a button flower bouquet... so many options!

however, this has been a pretty shitty week. on sunday i did my taxes and realized that i had severely underestimated how much i would owe this year, so that was kind of scary (i'm now officially banned from buying any more fabric!). and then monday was election day, which was heartbreaking for intelligent, socially conscious Canadians. (as my mom says "stupid people's votes count just as much as smart people's votes") my little brother has been massively cranky and is being rude to everyone, and today i had a bit of a fight with my sister. on top of all that, i've been feel super crappy for weeks now, and i'm beginning to suspect that what i've been optimistically referring to as a flare up is more likely a new reality, which anyone with chronic pain can tell you sucks royally.


with all of that in mind, i decided that i wanted to make something simple and fun for iron craft this week. i wanted to sit on the couch in front of the knowledge network, watch documentaries all night, and make something pretty.


so this is what i made -



i started with one of the awesome vintage embroidery hoops that i love, the kind that have a rubbery outside ring, and stretched some kelly green linen in it, because i've been obsessed with linen lately.



i ran across these vintage plastic flowers in my jewelery supply stash a few weeks ago, and was thinking that i should use them for something. i had three different bags of them, and i don't remember where all i got them from. i KNOW the biggest bag came from snapcrafty, and there are others on etsy that sell them as well.



i used purple and clear beads to hold the flowers on, and added a few individual beads to pull it all together.



and then i picked a shade of purple embroidery floss that matched the flowers, and embroidered the word "trust", alternating between chain stitch and stem stitch, just for the hell of it. i thought it suited this week specifically - we have to trust that the groundbreaking NDP opposition will be enough to stop Harper and the Tories from ruining Canada anymore than they already have, because if we don't, we'll never get out of bed in the morning. and it suits my life overall, because trust is something i still struggle with a lot of the time, trusting that people will be true, trusting that my health will be manageable, trusting that things happen for a reason. i thought about "faith", but knew it could be misinterpreted as a religious belief, so "trust" it was!


i'm really happy with how it turned out, it's been a long time since i've done a simple project that could be finished in one evening, just for the hell of it.