On this last day of summer, I thought I’d share a piece I worked on between May and August. Her Light Escape (43 Days) is one of my negative space embroideries.
For this piece, I used a circle template and stitched around randomly placed circles of varying sizes, using Valdani pearl cottons mostly in colors of the flowers I grow in my deck container garden. As always, the garden—which I dub the “Hummingbird Cafe”—exists to feed the local hummingbirds, which arrive in May and leave in September. I’m so blessed to be able to watch (and hear) these tiny visitors all summer.
As with my other abstract embroideries, the composition was not planned in advance but developed bit by bit as I worked. I used mostly seed stitches, layered over and around patches of white running stitch, with a few spots of satin stitch here and there. None of the circles is stitched completely around. Ephemerality—everything arriving and leaving, here only momentarily—is the theme.
These details let you see the stitches more closely, as well as the sides of the piece. I love exploring how much can be done with a limited number of stitches. Seed stitch and running stitch are so simple, yet yield much variety just through varying the size of the stitches and how densely they’re placed.
The title comes from a poem by Emily Dickinson about summer’s end and the passing of time:
As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away—
Too imperceptible at last
To seem like Perfidy—
A Quietness distilled
As Twilight long begun,
Or Nature spending with herself
Sequestered Afternoon—
The Dusk drew earlier in—
The Morning foreign shone—
A courteous, yet harrowing Grace,
As Guest, that would be gone—
And thus, without a Wing
Or service of a Keel
Our Summer made her light escape
Into the Beautiful.
On this last day of summer, I think of all that’s come and gone over the past few months. I think of the hummingbirds, those quick little bits of magic. What a delight they are! I feel sad that summer is ending, but I’m so grateful to have once again witnessed the daily, amazing parade of beauty.