The flowers I brought home for Thanksgiving - although they seemed to last forever (thank you, Flower Girl), eventually, their time was up. Ya’ know - all good things must come to an end. Or do they? Even as they began to languish, they still had so much to offer. So I spread them out on a vintage linen damask napkin (from my childhood), folded the napkin, wrapped it around a wooden dowel and tied it with string. I subjected it to steam for several hours and then I set it aside.
I forgot all about it for quite a few weeks, which wasn’t difficult at all because there are always so many other things to do. And on top of all the usual "other" things, there was Christmas, my daughter’s Big 30th Birthday, and her engagement to Bill. Yowzers!
Every once in a while I would notice the roll of cloth, on a window sill in the kitchen, and I’d make a mental note that it had probably "cooked" for long enough. But I was always busy with other things - important things, like bingeing on Netflix. Speaking of Netflix, I just finished watching a Netflix series called Seven Seconds - wow, it's really good - created by Veena Sud, who also developed The Killing.
Eventually my curiosity got the upper hand and I unrolled the napkin. It was pretty messy, with little particles stuck to it in places, so I used a whisk broom to clean it off.
And - Voila! - it’s beautiful! I love it. And I realize I finally have a piece of cloth worthy of the gorgeous hand-dyed threads I bought from Deb Lacativa a while back.
I hope I do something awesome with it. Lots and lots of stitches. In all those glorious colors. Maybe a patch here and there, maybe a hole. We’ll see.
