My mom and sisters and I are all fans of the Kawartha Turtle Trauma Centre, a great charity that works to support Ontario’s native turtles. Many native turtle species are on the ‘at risk’ list, and KTTC work to educate the public, conserve wetlands, and make Ontario a safer place for turtles.
I’m generally not a big fan of charities, but this one’s a good one, in my opinion.
Anyhow, they had a fund raiser planned called ‘The Art of the Turtle,’ and asked artists to create turtle ornaments and donate them to sell at their event. We decided to each make an ornament for this great cause.
I didn’t have a lot of time to get to this project, so worked on it while I was home for Thanksgiving back in October.
I’d wanted to do something sparkly to catch the light, but was more drawn to embroidery, and knew I could make something that glowed with colour. I research some Metis and Northern European embroidery and beadwork, and got to work.
Embroidering is a nice way to spend the time, particularly if you’ve got a happy cat – or a whole clutch of happy kittens – in your lap (as long as they don’t get too interested in your embroidery floss).
Since I’m working on a dark felt, and didn’t have a good way to draw on it, I sketched out the basic pattern in white thread.
I embroidered the outline in chain stitch, one of my least-favourtite stitches to do, but one that fills space with colour pretty fast.
