The Desert Wrap is a very good example of a piece of embroidery that I started without consideration for the amount of work it would take. It became as much work as the piece is big. Now, that is not a problem except that it has become a rather useless piece. Not a pouch but a wrap to protect your camera with or a protective layer to place an item on.
It started out with the mould I keep from years ago, a drawing of a shell that I found in the Atacama desert while touring on a bicycle. This particular design made a very pretty embroidered piece and I wanted to repeat that. The fabric I choose was rather big and I didn’t want to cut it. I wanted, somehow, focus on a wrap for a camera and since they’re big I had all the ingredients for a new project. I also thought of a design that would have the shells pop up a little and that could be accomplished by stitching a lot of straight stitches around the subject, with a soft layer behind it.
In doing so, the back had to be covered by another piece of fabric and to not have it flapping loosely I decided to attach the back with tiny stitches. This was done by silver threads surrounding each shell once which makes the back look interesting too.
The silver thread is directly an inspiration from Indian and some Yemeni embroidery. On my travels I gathered some Indian embroidery (I really wish I was more serious about embroidery back than, instead of chasing temples and restaurants mentioned in the Lonely Planet guidebooks).
This piece went with me on a tour through Bosnia, together with Geo in the Renault van it lay never idle on the dashboard. While Geo would get a haircut I would sit in the sun on the pavement, not entirely ignored at by curious locals. It saw sun and warmth, cold and misty autumn weather. It met with a desire to be finished since I never stop a project in the midst.
I kept on embroidering until it met my standard of beauty and beautiful it is, as well as more useless than not. Unfortunately postal service in Hungary is high and in case you do want this send out to you but with lower postal service it might pay off when it is send from the Netherlands or Germany or you pick it up yourself?
Either way, The Desert Wrap is inspired on the Atacama shell found on it’s shore, on Indian use of silver threads, on repeating one shape over a large surface and beauty combined with functionality (which is my motto), although this last one is, admittedly, not so apparent.
