Inspiration from Ukrainian Style Embroidery

I belong to a stamping club, The High Nooners.  We meet at noon every other month at our favorite restaurant, have lunch, share stamping ideas, and catch up with each other.  We also make a card for the theme of that month and recently our theme was quilting.  We visited the Quilt Show at Bethel Woods and decided to to use the quilts as inspiration.

I decided to use the new JustRite stamp set, Starburst Medallion Labels.  As I was playing with the stamped and embossed images, moving them around on the table, I realized that they reminded me of the counted cross stitch I used to do.  The colors I chose are traditional Ukrainian colors used for embroidered linen towels and tablecloths.  These designs are also used to make beautiful folk blouses for the traditional Ukrainian folk costumes.  I liked that and therefore went in that direction.  As is, both quilts and Ukrainian counted cross are geometric designs.

I used a simple layout so that medallion would stand out and be the main focus of the card.  I stamped and heat embossed the medallion 3 times and paper pieced it.  The saying and the stitching lines are from Hero Arts.

I then went and pulled out the counted cross stitch that I had started way back in high school!  I know, it's still not finished!  LOL!  (OK, I'm sure you too have a bunch of unfinished projects!)

You can definitely see that the star in the center of the JustRite image is very similar to the repeated star design in the embroidery! 

And now for some nostalgia......................I went and found a photo that my dad took of us way back in the summer of 1971!  Back in the day when we were up at Mohican Lake with no TV (no reception up there), no computers, etc.  We swam, played games and us girls spent hours doing embroidery!

From the left:  me, Martha's grandmother, Martha Fenchen, and my sister, Olga

My gosh, where did the time go???  Could it really be 40 years already!

Hope you enjoyed this journey through time and my cultural background.
    ~Anna