Hmong Elephant Footprint Inspiration piece

This is first of my series on cultural pieces. My format ( A plan for the organization and arrangement of a specified production) will remain the same. I will continue to use a square with an X stitch, only with the possibility of using 3 strands of floss for needed detail definition. My hopes are as follows:

1. Learn a bit about the culture I am working on.

2. Learn a bit about the way they do the particular art piece I am using as an inspiration.

3. Work with my format, style, and color to accomplish the piece I am working off of.

Hmong Elephant Footprint

Hmong Elephant Footprint inspiration piece

This piece is made from cloth. It is a very detailed laying of fabric pieces or appliqué. Patterns are often named after things found in nature. In the piece I made, the circular feeling of the fabric inspiration piece are reduced. I feel this makes it less successful. In order to change the appearance of mine, I would need to drop the stitch down in the following rows. 

You can see that just by dropping the 2 green squares in the 2 horizontal rows, and adding green to the diagonal rows, the piece takes on a more circular feel than the original finished piece.

Another item that I wanted to point out is the symbolism within the piece. 

My piece has 2 of the 3 that I found from this blog. ( http://tribal-made.blogspot.com/2010_11_01_archive.html) The heart meaning Love and the spiral meaning Longevity are both seen in my piece. I, however, would like a bit more spiral in my piece. This would be complicated with my format, due to it's size, but it would be more reflective of the actual longevity spiral.

I am excited about doing these pieces this year. I am unsure if I am going to be able to do my goal of 12 or not, but I am certainly going to enjoy the process. K~