Toisnot Tuscarora Resist Design Pattern | Strawberry Moon > June
Another day “Stitching Up My Blues on the musical land of the Spillimacheen Wetlands. The trees dance and sing as the winds blow through them. Spillimacheen is a bush settlement in the Columbia Valley of British Columbia. It’s the East Kootenay Regional District. Located at the confluence of the Spillmacheen and Columbia Rivers in the Rocky Mountain Trench. The wetlands are important to the birds migrating north to south on the Pacific Flyway from Alaska to Patagonia. This is a healing land, where you can see the mountains of Moses and Abraham. I feel Creator’s healing energy all around me at Flyway Farm and Forest. It’s God’s amazing grace that brings me to this place for healing.
Two techniques are used to create Strawberry Moon medicine cloth. The first is to “Stitch Up My Blues” which was transferred to me by Grand Mere, Mattie Burnette, on her land in Georgetown, South Carolina. The second technique is to “Bind Up My Blues” taught to me by her daughter and my God-Mother, Mat Randolph. When I first learned the technique we bound up our Blues with twine but later Yat, my name for Mat, discovered we could use rubber bands.
The design of the Strawberry Moon Medicine Cloth is to create three horizontal lines the length of the fabric in North to South directions. This makes four strawberry plant bed rows for each of the four land locations, 1)woods off Hwy 42 East, 2)Daniel Hill, 3)Atlantic Street, and 4)Dean’s Farm. The mountains or folds are stitched with seven rows of running stitches, which will be gathered. The other areas, which are the strawberry plant beds are bound with rubber bands. I use standard rubber bands for the cultivated strawberries and small rubber bands for the wild strawberries.
Video On How to Get Started Creating Strawberry Moon
Stitching Up My Blues
Video #2 on Creating Strawberry Moon
Video 03 Creating Strawberry Moon on Spillmacheen Wetlands
Strawberry Moon Design Created by Patti Derbyshire-May During Indigenous Artist Intensive On The Okanagan at the University of British Columbia
Fiber Art by Carola 