Sunday, February 6, 2022

What I've been up to... Marie's Medicine Bag

Marie's Medicine Bag and the sister bag.

It's been a while since I posted about what I've been up to...stitching project-wise. With the ease of posting on Instagram and Facebook, I've tended to focus my blog posts on featuring student work and upcoming workshops. Now that those are all underway for the Winter session, I thought I'd post about one of my in-progress projects. For those of you who want to follow me on a more regular basis...I post nearly every day on Instagram (boothjb4757) and Facebook (Julie Basseches Booth). Feel free to pop over to my feed to get almost daily posts of my work.

Marie's Medicine Bag is an ongoing project started in 2021. Marie's been very patient! I'm finally back to seriously stitching on her bag. I'm very excited about it and how she plans to use it. I'm hoping for more opportunities to create meaningful pieces such as this that will be used with a spiritual purpose in mind. This is also a collaboration...which gives it additional meaning. Marie beaded around the amazing Sonoran stone that will be the centerpiece of the bag. She wants the beaded stone piece to be removable so it can also be used as pendant. That required a bit of brainstorming and the Sonoran had to travel back and forth in order to receive a beaded bail that would fit through a slit in front flap.

Here's a mock-up sample that I made of the front flap so that Marie could create the bail to fit.


The bag went through two design iterations... another part of the collaboration. One design plan was to work with fabric patches and cover them with Running stitch patterns in my Boro-style stitching. This was a "quieter" design.

First design attempt for the Medicine bag.

Although Marie liked the layout and colors. This was not what was in her mind's eye. She gave me permission to "go wild and crazy"! So I switched gears and out came the yarns and fabric bits and tulle and the fun really started!

Lots of fun "stuff" to play with for the second design!

The final layout for the bag is full of energy and the opportunity for lots of  "organic" stitching.

Final layout of the front.
Final layout of the back.

Here are a couple of recent photos of my stitching on the bag. I looking forward to carving out more time to work on it over the coming months. I plan to update here but also be sure to check my Instagram (booth jb4757) and Facebook (Julie Basseches Booth) feeds for more immediate images of my progress. Thanks for stopping by....
Beginning with some couching.


More stitching details.