The decision to give The Crow to Wendy Golden-Levitt to share with traumatized children as part of their therapy (see yesterday’s post), not only inspired subsequent design choices, it gave energy to completion. Like the commissioned quilt, I wanted there to be very soft textures (this one: angora knit, silk wings, satin woven sections, velvet backing). After mounting the rectangle to a jacket, with visions of children running with the crow on their backs, I cut it away, because it wouldn’t fit the little ones, and anyway, three feet of streaming ribbon could possibly problematic. The captions tell the rest.
damp stretching knit onto felt
defining wing area
rejected bead eye, used button; added silk for wings and belly, felt for feet
split running stitch to better define beak; a strip of my mother’s wool challis scarf to get her in there
stitched to velvet jacket, then cut away, leaving velvet edges; added runners of lace and satin
vision of child wearing crow and streaming tails changed to something that could sit in their lap, not get caught on anything; size shouldn’t matter
returning to ‘treasure map’ idea, this time with star map and red X’s marking the spot
crow communing with birds; tapering rectangle shows need of additional cloth
kept little blue tab on side — it looks to me like a way out or a way in
added soft polka dot panels to even lower edges
ready to fly away!
