In testing (or tempting?) my kittens again, I dug up a 2021 workshop through TextileArtist.org‘s Stitch Club by Saima Kaur who introduced a project based on bright, bold, and whimsically fun figures inspired by traditional folk art in India. I took my inspiration from some photographs taken during my South Africa trip of ancient rock art (as yet unstudied! my anthropological heart mourns a little) .

I had these photographs in the back of my mind for quite some time (the trip was in 2019). I don’t know much about this particular kind of rock art, but I loved the shapes of the figures so I knew I wanted to some day use them in my art.

I used photoshop to turn them black and white so I could more easily see the figures. Then, I deleted the backgrounds and copied them into a new document to arrange in a circular pattern. Next, I chose some vivid colors outside of my usual scheme and set to work. This is definitely something outside of my normal, but as Saima suggested, it did bring me cheer and joy working with the colors and whimsy figures.

This time, the kittens (who are about 5 months old now) were attracted a little to my thread as I worked. Mostly Toby, since he was being such a sweet lap cat, but it was manageable. What wasn’t was Ollie’s dire need to attack every stitched piece on my wall. Sadly, my history of textile art over the last few years has been reduced to what he cannot reach; the rest are lying safely in a box for now. It’s okay, we love him anyway. 😸