A coral fabric purse? Why yes!

I can’t begin to tell you how long I had that piece of coral linen – so long that I’ve forgotten where it came from. For years it lived in a stash of linen in various shades of cream and ecru I kept for embroidery projects.

I had no idea what to do with the coral linen fabric and I don’t know why I never had the imagination to do anything with it. Maybe we had to get to know one another better before we could get down to the intimate business of creating. Or perhaps something in me had to ripen and deepen before I could see what the coral linen had to offer, to know what it wanted of me.

Every so often the coral linen would crawl out of the pile and stare at me. I’d stare back, shake my head and think, no way. I’d shove it to the bottom of the fabric pile and choose the cream or ecru linen. Safe, easy colors. Predictable, elegant and refined. Not in-your-face and show-offish like coral.

Then overnight, all shades of coral became the darling of the fashion industry. Designers showed dresses in coral. Women sported coral lipstick and coral nail polish.

And about that time, coincidentally – or maybe not, it all depends on your point of view – the coral linen on my shelf surfaced again.

This time I didn’t turn my back on it with a scowl of disdain or a dismissive shrug of my shoulders. I took the fabric into my hands and asked of it a question I’d read many years ago in the book, “Eskimo Realities,” by Edmund Snow Carpenter: “What do you want to be?”

The answer that formed inside my head took the shape of a small purse. Then another question presented itself: What else do I have that I don’t know what to do with? Well, there was the rainbow variegated embroidery floss I’d had longer than the coral cloth. And several little mirrors left over from a shisha embroidery project. And a scattering of silvery glass beads.

With those ingredients assembled, I set about dreaming the design to embroider on the purse.

Finding a purse pattern was easy. I went to the loose-leaf notebook where I compile ideas that appeal to me and found just the shape I wanted. I cut a crude pattern from white paper.

Then I spotted my basket of seashells and a scallop shell caught my eye. The shape of the shell and the shape of the purse, it seemed to me, had something harmonious in common. The curves, maybe. I traced around the shell, using it as a template for the embroidery design.

I had no idea what the rest of the design would look like, but I trusted it to evolve – as so much in life evolves if you just let go and move along with it. Soon, I saw that a shisha mirror ought to be placed between the two shell shapes.

After I embroidered the shells, did the beading and set the shisha mirror in place, I had to figure out what to do with the remaining blank space – leave it or fill it. I reached for scissors and paper, did a little random cutting and came up with the wing shape, which fit nicely over the shell shapes. I filled that shape with row after row of chain stitching using the variegated floss.

I turned the purse over and on the back, I placed a larger shisha mirror and sewed it in place.

After several evenings of working on the purse, I was ready to go to the sewing machine to stitch the little bag together. I lined it with a silky print featuring red and yellow flowers. I sewed in a zipper and before I knew it, it was done. In the process, we had come to an understanding, the coral linen and I: When something seeks to enter your heart and imagination, let it.

Ardeana Hamlin may be reached at 990-8153, or e-mail ahamlin@bangordailynews.net.

Common Threads

Ardene Scroggy of Blue Hill read my April 19 column about the pleasures of hanging out clothes to dry and related how her clothesline stands at the edge of a backyard filled with lupine. She described when the lupine go by, leaving unopened, dried-up seed pods.

“As I hang out my clothes on a hot sunny day, I often hear the ‘snaps’ of the pods bursting to disperse the seeds,” she wrote. “I love all the sounds of nature and the bursting pods remind me that summer and the lupine-filled month of June will come again.”