Prayer for Rain

TUESDAY, MAY 22, 2012

Prayer for Rain

Rain

ATC trade April 2012

My prayer flag for spring continues the rain theme from our April ATC trade. My image of the color "rain" was meant to capture a mood...a change of plans, canceled outings, grey skies, wind and rain striking windows...all part of living in western New York. Gloomy. 

 In contrast, my prayer flag calls for rain in a place that needs the rain badly: California. 

I had some sheer, highly starched cotton which I tore into three pieces to use as three layers. I used  thermofax screens to paint the background blue and added branches on top of that. I stitched some vertical lines adding "drops" of clear glass beads to represent rain.

The branches reminded me of forsythia bushes, one of the early spring bloomers inWestern NY. I added the yellow forsythia flowers with machine stitching and embroidered French knots to look like budding flowers.

Forsythia bushes, detail

I embroidered the word "rain"  and put the three layers together , joining them at the top to form a sleeve to hang the flag. I'm hoping to make more prayer flags soon.