Prayer Flag Swap

What a lovely afternoon I have had after the rain eventually saved me from having to do anymore work in the garden.  The veggies are all in and have been getting a lovely soak while I've been playing in my sewing room.

The current Global Piecers swap is of prayer flags.  One of our members suggested the idea and a quick search on the internet provided loads of inspiration, including The Prayer Flag Project.  We were all enthused and keen to start being creative.  As well as our swaps we regularly exchange messages on our Yahoo group, several of us are on Facebook and some of us even see some members in real life!  We support and care for each other as well as stitch for one another and send chocolate.  The Prayer Flag swap seems especially appropriate.

I started by pulling out a pile of fabrics and possible embellishments.  I had a few criteria in mind:

a.  as many natural materials and natural dyes as possible, I feel these will be more in tune with the flags blowing outside and gently disintegrating.  I have cotton, linen, silk, dyed with indigo, woad, persimmon, daffodils, weld…

b.  fabrics from around the world, as the Global Piecers are around the world, I have textiles from the UK, Japan, Africa, Malta, India…

c.  the flags to be along the lines of boro cloth, lots of pieces joined together to make a new piece. 

My next step was to sort the fabrics into colour piles:

Then to cut a piece of backing cloth.  I'm using cotton muslin (from Dunelm, £3.49/m 137cm wide, thanks to Angela for this tip).  The agreed size for the flags is 9"x7" and there is a 1.5" hem at the top for threading the flags together.

Next I decided which colours suited which Global Piecer.  I wonder who is orange?

And who is blue with a flash of yellow and gold?

Do you think you might be receiving a purple prayer flag?

Lots of tearing and placing and pinning later and I have six prayer flags laid out.  I shall leave them overnight and see how they feel tomorrow.

Then I shall make any adjustments necessary and tack down all the pieces.  Then the fun really begins as, after a quick line of machining to attach the streamers to the bottom of each flag, I shall be slow stitching each flag which will give me plenty of time to think about the recipients.  Running stitches, couched threads, a few simple embroidery stitches, then the addition of some special words.  I will share as I progress but, of course, I can't reveal to whom each flag will belong!