Aurifil Artisan Challenge: August 2020

It's been... a while, since I blogged. It's also been... a crazy 6 months, since I blogged. The last blog post I published was the day before our school closures were announced back in March due to coronavirus. Things were a bit crazy busy for a while with the kids home and both parents having job responsibilities (we appreciate having jobs to be stressed about). In June, the kids started at a new daycare and we had a bit of relief in finding a routine. And now in August, our schedule is about to change again as we adjust to our new fall school schedules, which are still a moving target.

Anyways, in that time, I was accepted to the Aurifil Artisan program for 2020 (again), hooray! I'm so happy to continue working with Aurifil because I would be using Aurifil thread anyways and the monthly challenges they set up push me a little out of what I normally might be making for a personal challenge.

For the August 2020 challenge, we were prompted to cross-stitch or embroider with Aurifloss, the Aurifil version of embroidery thread. In my first two embroidery hoops, I paired Aurifloss with watercolors converted to fabric via Spoonflower printing, using different thread color to compliment the fabric with simple geometric shapes to mirror the flying geese print. In my latter four pieces, I paired Aurifloss with some of my recent ice dyeing results, combining simple embroidery curved lines with bright, colorful ice dyed pieces.

In both pieces, I think the effortless use of geometric embroidery encourage your eyes to move about to explore the fabric. I'm very happy with the results, the quality of Aurifloss, and the little work-in-progress display. I hope to expand on this little wall display in the future and in the meantime, I hope you enjoy the photos!