Stitch Like An Egyptian

This week I packed my bags and headed down to the coast to join my husband at the 11^th International Estuarine and Biogeochemistry Symposium.  I understand the discussions and presentations were very productive and interesting, although I myself understood very little of anything I heard other than water and oil spill. However, my husband's department was hosting so I played the role of the dutiful wife and suffered through it:

The Boat Ramp at Taylor's Creek, Beaufort, NC

Wild horse, one of the many descended from horses stranded on Shackleford Island by the early colonists. For more information see the link at the bottom of the post.

Look closely for the bird of prey, not sure what it is, an osprey maybe

You may be asking, “What does this have to do with embroidering a terrible Egyptian motif?” Well, as it happens, Sherif's Birthday had recently slipped by in all this excitement. I had begun his birthday project weeks ago, but just could not finish it in time.  But lo- vacation is the perfect time to catch up on projects!

The inspiration for this project comes from a Sublime Stitching project found in Jenny Hart’s book Embroidered Effects (pg  110).  The gist of this project is to take a child’s drawing and transfer it into an embroidery pattern, stitch and frame or dress into a pillow etc. 

For those of us without children, and without friends with children, we have to be a bit more creative.  For me it was a laughably proportioned self-portrait I made at a lecture I attended last February.  The lecture was “How to Draw Like an Egyptian” presented by and at the North Carolina Museum of Arts. The first half of the lecture discussed the highly standardized nature of Egyptian design and hieroglyphics.  The second half involved taking a blank grid and an example drawing-  and then trying to draw like an Egyptian while nibbling’ hors d’oeuvres and sipping wine.

I used a sturdy cotton tea towel for my project and transferred using tailors tracing paper, then going over the detail with an ink pen.

For more information about the wild horses of Shackleford click here.