Dog Days of Summer

Here's another installment in my "keep me going" series--this process of creating yardage from my scrap bin.  As I was working on this batch of green scraps, my mind wandered as usual.  I was thinking about a couple of things that came together in this project.  I noticed that many of the scraps I was using included a lot of brown and that I'd need to pay attention to how I put things together so that my final piece would read more green than brown.

The other thing I was thinking about was the upcoming juried show at the Loading Dock Gallery and what I was going to submit.  The theme of the show is Dog Days of Summer.  I've been stumped about that for a while, but a phrase that popped into my mind while I was doing this piecing helped me figure it out. 

The green/brown balance in my piece brought to mind the way the grass in fields and lawns often turns to brown in August if the summer is dry.  This thought gave me the idea to turn this particular fabric into a piece called "Keep Watering that Garden."  It will be the center panel of a triptych.  The other two panels will use smaller creations from the same fabrics.

The piece is about how you have to keep working at things, even just a little, even when it's hard, or you're hot and tired.  This central panel includes embroidered words--my musings as I put this together.  The other two will be embellished differently.

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