Love in Stitches

It just so happens that I am not a crafty person. I try. I learned to crochet a tiny little bit. I learned to knit an even tinier bit. I cannot sew. I can hand sew things to bras for belly dance. Other than a hand sewn bra, I've never completed a project. Hand crafts require a certain amount of dexterity that I seem to lack. That, and my focus sucks. I keep trying, though. I'm going to successfully knit, crochet, sew, etc., dammit!

When a group of friends decided to work on a collaborative project for another friend in which each individual embroidered a quilt square, I pondered my lack of talent, my zero experience in embroidery, and my inability to actually finish projects and said, "Count me in!"

Small and brief backstory - I belong to a group of mothers who all had children at the same time. It's like a Due Date Club that you see on mommy websites. We've known each other for years and have shared many ups and downs. One of the mamas there has been in need of a little extra love. Since we're all spread out over the world, we needed to come up with a way to give her a group hug. We decided that each one of us would pick out a fabric and embroider our name and maybe a little something extra to symbolize our respective personalities. We created a little group and all of the finer details were organized by a couple of our mamas, with one of them volunteering to take all of our squares, sew them together, do the whole batting and backing and trimming thing to turn it into a wrap.

I decided on a little belly dance symbol to represent me. Tribal Belly Dance is extremely important to my life. In this group, I pretty much give belly dance as an answer to all problems. Feeling bad about the world? Belly dance? Need to feel love for your body, no matter the shape? Belly dance. Menstrual cramps? Belly dance? Want to get active without killing yourself? Belly dance. World peace? Belly dance. It's been a big part of my life for several years. Deciding on that symbol was the easy part. Actually putting a symbol into stitches was terrifying to me.

I decided on a simple belly/hips with a hip belt and tassels as it's a rather common symbol to see regarding belly dance. I don't know how well it shows in my picture, but I added tassels to the hip belt as they are more closely associated with the tribal forms (especially ATS and ITS) of belly dance than with your traditional Raqs or cabaret belly dance. I am pretty sure I broke many rules about embroidery. I certainly did when it came to tying off my thread. I tried to learn some stitches via YouTube tutorials, but mostly winged it since I couldn't watch and stitch at the same time. I did what I did what I believe are split stitches. I was sweating and having heart palpitations the whole time. Haha. The hardest part was actually my name. I messed it up several times and ended up pulling the thread back out. This left a series a of holes in the project, which you may be able to see here. I panicked at that point, but the friend who was sewing the whole thing together said she believed the holes would shrink once washed and not to worry about it.

We spent a couple of weeks posting pictures of our squares. It was amazing to see the level of talent among our group of friends. Every single square was a beautiful testament to that particular friend. Eventually, all of the squares were sent in. Our friend sewed them all together, spacing with blank squares, lined it, backed it, and put an edge all around it. It turned out beautifully.

It was received just a few weeks ago, at a time when that mama needed it so much. She immediately posted a picture of herself wrapped up in our big hand stitched group hug. It's something she will treasure forever and it's a reminder to our whole group of the bond that we have shared over the years.