I've long since forgotten how I ended with this shirt, though considering the proportion of clothes given to me, that wouldn't be a bad guess. I'm not even certain whether I worked it in high school or college. At any rate, I ended up with a marine shirt (or so someone told me) with a cool looking embroidered patch on the sleeve—some sort of chevrons and stripes as I recall.
Even before 9/11, I'm not certain I'd have the temerity to mix it up like that now, or even wear the uniform of a group to which I have little knowledge, few qualifications and no right to belong. (It blows my mind that people pretend to be navy SEALs.) Back then, I suppose I figured it was obvious that I was not and would never be a marine; I just liked the color and embroidered patch. But if the marines represent the military, which undertakes the prosecution of war, I, finding reversals and contrasts interesting (besides having heard so much of the hippie movement, which of course was merely an echo by the time I went off to college) decided to undermine the bellicose, destructive imagery with that of peace and growth. (However, I still have this subversive tendancy to “neutralize” this or that theme or design element with its opposite.)
Hence the subject matter.
One reason this may have been a college project is the fact that the symbols are depicted via the decoration of their negative space, a concept to which I wasn't really formally exposed until I took college Drawing.
But this is primarily a sampler. I'm sorry to say I never really mastered very many stitches though: as I rule, the bulk of my work is done in satin, (including the long and short variation), stem, (plus what you might call detached stem) chain, and french knots. That's it. Oh, and in the past three years or so, I finally more or less learned to do bullion without a picture handy by.
Now, it's just a sampler. Oddly enough clothes usually wear out long before the embroidery does, and so I have only the square piece of fabric from the back of the shirt on which I practiced these stitches.
Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.
