December tends to get away from me.
I’ve learned to make peace with the fact that studio time will be limited considering all the extras that go hand-in-hand with this particular month. But I still try to squeeze in time around the edges for making art .

On December 1st I began a new little house, wanting to get just one more under my belt before year’s end. I also figured it would be something of an ace up my sleeve for the busy weeks ahead, knowing there would be times when sitting quietly to stitch would get me into a calmer headspace.

The sticking point with this particular piece has been the open areas where the silk didn’t absorb any dye because it couldn’t seep through the many-layered folds. Without time to do anything but forge ahead, I tried to position the blank areas so as to play off the steep incline of the roof. But that still wasn’t enough – the empty spaces seemed to hang in mid-air like a half-finished sentence.

Thanks to a dog-walk epiphany after reading an article on Jane Perkins’ art, I decided to dig into a collection of white buttons that has followed me around for the past 35+ years. Their glossy texture and variety of sizes proved a means toward transforming the undyed emptiness into areas that could hold their own against, and in alliance with, the bold shibori patterns. Not unlike a Japanese garden, they provide a rest for the eye that includes an element of visual interest.

When I was first married, my mother gave me a baggie filled with white shirt buttons so that I would never be without when I needed a replacement for one of my husband’s work shirts. It was a sweet gesture and so “of an era”. And even though at the time the idea may have raised my feminist hackles a tiny bit, I recognized it then, and certainly now, as an offering that was a perfect expression of my mother’s hallmark thoughtfulness, practicality, and organizational skills.

And while I didn’t use many of the buttons for their intended purpose, I’ve kept the bag through all our many moves, and have continued to add to it ever since.

Not only has this turned out to be a satisfactory solution for making this little piece whole, the process has also contributed to making me feel a bit more whole during a holiday season when for the first time ever, like so many other people, my husband and I can’t be with family. It brings me comfort to work with these little white discs of shell and plastic, to be blanketed in my mother’s thoughtfulness (this will be our 9th Christmas without her), and to think of this piece as a holiday gift she is sharing across time and space.

Wishing you a peaceful holiday…