The Right Thing?

Hand sewing, and thinking.  In that order, pretty much.  Finished a section of hand stitch on Borderline, the yellowish rectangle of hand made paper.

My original intention had been to smother that area in tiny seed stitches; as you can see, I've changed my mind, and limited the stitch to the edges, in a sort of uneven border.

So why the change of heart?  Well...because of the fragility of the paper, I had begun by stitching all the way round the edges.  In places where there were holes or tears, I stitched fairly intensively, to make sure the tears didn't get any worse as I worked.  When I had finished the first pass, I realised that that looked interesting, and that really, all I needed to do was to add a bit more stitch in the areas that had only really got a single line of stitch in the first pass, but otherwise, it was done.  Plus, I looked carefully at the areas in the centre: here's a close up.

The texture in this is remarkable.  I felt that intense stitch, instead of adding to that, would detract from it, by flattening it out.  So I stopped. 

And now, I have to decide what to do next.  I think I'm going to add more stitch to that circular area top right.  I'm trying to decide whether or not to remove the knots...yes, the knots that took me an inordinate amount of time to create .  I have two options.  Either remove them completely or add more, because they look off balance.  My money's on removal.  Yes, they took an eternity.  Yes, I'm proud of them.  No, they add nothing much, and may well detract from the whole thing...so several hours work is going to be cut out, because it feels like the right thing to do.  I'll be adding more lines, but this time, running stitch, rather than single long stitches.  And then I'll look again, to see if that was the right thing to do.

And, in the end, that's all every single decision boils down to : is it the right thing to do for this piece?  No matter how long you spent on it, no matter how much you like it, if it doesn't work, it has to come out.  Either that, or you have to take that favourite area, and rebuild the piece around it. That never crossed my mind in this instance, but it's something I've done with paintings, quite regularly.  Either way, it's extra work, and it may take you a long way from your original intention...but it's worth it.

And now I'm off to cut out those knots...sigh.