Eileen Kwan Handmade Story

Just minutes before the sun setting, we rounded the bend in the road. It had been raining on this fall day and the sky still looked unsettled but there it was:  The Marsh bathed in an other-worldly kind of golden light.

So I set out to capture this moment.

I got started with a blank swath of linen and sketched out the space with a running stitch.

The elegant tree line off in the distance would anchor The Marsh. And then I started to build layer upon layer of “gold” to create the space for the grasses to live in The Marsh. 

The grasses were built up over several weeks with the whipped chain stitch. And then, the canvas started to come alive with texture and breathe and vibrate.

I’ve been happily lost and found knee-deep in The Marsh over the past year while working on this tapestry. LOST when I did not know how or where to turn…and FOUND when I believed I had solved a complicated riddle.