brown, mauve and creamy off-white. 21" x 18"
A purple version of this design was my entry for the August 2016 Common Thread Vintage Christmas challenge. My design is vintage in subject matter, and yet has a modern, abstract twist to it. For that reason, it was not really a good fit for the theme; however It is a what I came up with. When I was a child, Jesus was at the absolute center of both Christmas and Easter celebrations. My mother collected Nativity Scenes, and would set them all out right after Thanksgiving. My mind went through all sorts of philosophical wanderings as I worked on this piece. For instance, I made the face of the Christ child a simple glow of light, representing the statements in the Bible that he is the light of the world. I started playing around with one of my marbled designs, which happened to be in purple, and came up with two figures I liked that were pretty abstract, but reminded me of the nativity scene. I thought about changing everything to green - but decided against it, because I did not like it as well, and well, purple is for royalty. The star of the nativity scene is perceived of by many as the King of Kings. For me it is very significant that Mary, Joseph and the infant Jesus are surrounded by the stars of the universe, for he is my Lord, and I believe him to be eternal, living outside of time. I am happy with the way it turned out. Perhaps you will like it too. My original plan was to do a design based on Christmas cookies, as I thought of how patiently my mother made her Christmas sugar cookies and frosted them. She made angels, Santa Claus, reindeer, stars and candles. She was very particular about the way she frosted them, using multiple colors. We children got to eat the ones that broke as she worked on them. They were a work of art. But, as you can see, this is not a Christmas cookie! View the entire Christmas collection here: http://www.spoonflower.com/collections/163792 Happy sewing! Copyright - Mary Kathryn Wykes - August 12, 2016