This post was written by Erin based on Katrin’s telling of the making of her embroidered travel belt.

Your life is your most powerful art.  See you at the boutique.

erin

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While on my first road trip across Canada, with the man I later married, I wanted to record our travels.  The problem was I get car sickness.

Despite, the fact that I couldn’t write in my journal,  I found embroidery to be something I could handle even with the rock and roll of the road.  Embroidery became my traveling form of journaling.

I stitched the landscapes and the names of all the animals we saw along the way.

The coloured threads depict the story of our road trip  together.

I would sit in the passenger seat of our non air-conditioned van and stitch away.

The finished belt wraps around my body twice.

The needle pulled the thread in and out of the fabric stitching the moments I wanted to capture.   The van hit the road.  My needle pulled the thread.  The wind swept us away at the start of our journey.   The stitches became pictures.  The pictures began the story of our journey.  I stitched the flower called Indian paint brush.  Wild to Canada, this flower called out to be remembered.  I stitched the orange and yellow of it’s petals.  The lakes in Ontario were numerous  swimming pleasures.  There were so many lakes.  I painted with the blue of my embroidery thread just one to remember them all.  As we approached the prairies fields of Canola, also called Rape seed, danced yellow blooms that waved in the wind.  Dots of yellow thread floated across the belt.

The car broke down and we had to spend three days waiting for a part in Edmonton.  I stitched the part we needed  called a U joint.  We drove on to the Rockies.  Nights under the crescent moon were beautiful.

We took the fairy to Salt Spring Island and went swimming with purple and blue  dragon flies.

We watched boat racing on a Native reserve on Vancouver Island.  We walked in the red wood forest under the full moon.

Then we left Canada.  We hit Seattle and we went to the fish and flower market.  Four hours from Seattle, we spent two days at mount Saint Helen the mountain that erupted years before.

LOVE…….LOVE LOVE WAS EVERYTHING.  Our van was love parked in dry lands that had sage bushes all around.  I stitched a heart floating over our van.  I stitched my love.  My heart.

We drove through the Craters of the Moon and finally got back to the rivers of Ontario.  Eager to get home we drove and drove and drove…day and night.  We took shifts.

The road took us home.