Angels Among Us

I believe there are angels among us - but of course not sporting wings and a halo. (These things did not appear in art until the Renaissance)

Someone (a good friend, of course) suggested that my two little angels other than the birthday girls had an "ethnic" look about them, and prodded me with two more requests - A Swedish angel first.

I had to look up "Swedish National Dress," and found one that was created in the late 19th century (I'll check my date on that) by a woman who wanted an identifying costume. It's blue and yellow, of course, as is the Swedish National Flag.

The white flowers are daisies, but I had to conventionalize them here, as the figure is small, and they wouldn't stitch well except in silk ribbon. I made them into little six petaled flowers to be worked in Smyrna cross "bumps."

The next one speaks for itself as to origin, and I really enjoyed the designing of it. My goal was to not make it trite, which was a challenging task! I do hope I'll get to see it stitched.

The lace on the bottom of the apron is shown as little blue squares, indicating where to put Smyrna crosses as "bumps" (in white, of course) representing the beautiful Irish crocheted lace. The Irish were the ones who started replicating lace long ago with crochet!

I've been so fascinated with dreaming up costumes for these things that I may decide to make them a little larger than the 7 3/4" and leave off the halo and wings - just standing dolls of some sort.

I will probaby travel to Mexico next, in my thoughts, as there are regional traditional costumes there that are breathtaking with their embroidery.