Nine Times....

...out of ten, there is no plan.  Often, things go well...sometimes they don't.  Today, I thought, shall work on the last of the fascinator bases I've been talking about... and couldn't find the damn thing.  While I was hunting it in the studio (where it wasn't...), I came across a butterfly that said, you could combine me with the small silk flower you made just to see if it was too small...and the purple covered comb you made ages ago....

I can do that, thinks I.  Overthinks, in fact; see the wire that the butterfly is on, has been attached to a needle, to allow me to thread it through the flower, because the wire wouldn't go through on its own...   Well, it wouldn't go through on a needle either...but it did go straight through the heart of the flower.  So far so good.

And then, gentle reader, it all went to hell in a handcart.  Trying to attach the combination was beyond fiddly.  And then this happened :

Note to self : Things that are made of feathers are not suitable for this sort of thing, altogether too delicate. Dammit. If you have to, then attach it at the end....more chance of it staying in one piece.  Though in truth, if it breaks that easily, don't put it on a comb...it'll be safer on a hat.  And really, I should have used glue; stitching the flower on to a sinamay covered comb is almost impossible.  Trying to stitch on the top level only, without getting the thread caught in the tines of the comb would try the patience of a saint.  Growl.  So, what am I left with?

Pretty enough...but not worth the effort, I suspect.  Sorry the photos are awful today, lousy light and not my usual camera...sigh.  At least I finally found the missing fascinator base, and can proceed accordingly.

Unpicking Stitch...

...isn't something I do routinely.  Partly, that's because of the way I use stitch... I tend to use layers of stitch, so one wee blip doesn't cause me to unpick a line of stitching. Partly, I'm fairly flexible; I don't usually have something specific in mind, so the word 'wrong' doesn't really figure in my artistic vocabulary.  So it takes something seriously 'wrong' to make me unpick.  This, though, ticked all the boxes.

It started with one of Cara's paintings, this one, to be precise.

I like this one. I think it's to do with the amount of space there is between the elements.  Space intrigues me... so I did a couple of versions of my own, to see if I could work out what it was I liked about it.

My version is pared back even further.  It has the feeling of a landscape....a Norfolk landscape, all sky and flatness.   And at that point, I thought, textile.  And transparent cloth.  And that's when it started going to hell in a handcart.  Because my selection of transparent cloth is fairly limited...so I went with what I had.  The top section of this is great...the bottom...bleh...

Meet Blue Moon.  The top is a small piece of hand dyed silk organza, and that works pretty well. The bottom is also hand dyed silk, and looked okay before I applied it, when there was light coming through it....but it's just Too Dark.  The piece of ribbon and the stitch I added doesn't help, nor did the light coloured ribbon, or the silver paint I daubed it with, in the hope of making it just a bit lighter...sigh.

So that's what I'm unpicking.  I have absolutely no idea what I'll add in its place, but I do know it mustn't be dark.  I think I might hand paint some silk organza to use; I may not have that much of a selection of finished cloth, but I do have some silk for dyeing.  And we'll see how that goes.  Sadly, I can't remove the silver paint from the white cloth, so that, too needs to be thought through.  I also suspect that the square format  it's in isn't doing it any favours; it messes up the balance of the two elements... plenty of space, but in the wrong places (yes, it's a napkin...I use them for sketches).  It's a sketch; that's what it's for, of course, but I don't usually misjudge quite so badly.  Hey ho...onwards and upwards...

Sod's Law Of Sewing...

...applied in a variety of ways, yesterday.  I wanted to take a photograph.  Or two.  But I knew that the batteries in the camera are flat.  I also knew that I had rechargeable batteries....but where was the charger?  Sod's law, version one, states that whatever it is you have lost, you will find it in that elusive 'safe place', which will be the last place you look.  And, by extension, you will also find something you'd forgotten you had. 

My safe place is the footstool in the living room.  Safe, because my feet are on it.  Unthought of, because my feet are indeed usually on it...sigh.  However, not only did I find the charger (just as well, or this post wouldn't be happening), I found this piece of felting from I hate to think how long ago.

Okay, it's more of a collar than a scarf, really, nuno felted on hand dyed silk organza.  It's a bit greener than it's showing here, and it needs a bit more felting, which it might or might not get.  It was wet felted, but that's out of the question now, so any additional work I do will be with the embellisher.  I want to add stitch...which brings me to Sod's Law Of Sewing, Part II.

Which is... no matter what you have, you will not have Just The Right Thing.  In my case, that's hand dyed thread in the right colours and quantities.  Here's what I found when I went hunting.

The silk threads are interesting, would be appropriate, but I don't think there's enough of them.  And there's definitely not enough of that hand dyed perle at the front.... so...that leaves the chenille.  Yes, chenille.  The most hated yarn in my personal universe.  Not only is there more than enough of it, it's absolutely the right colours, too.  Damn.

So now the question is, what to do with it...because it really is perfect...  I could hand felt it, or use the embellisher to add it...or I could couch it with the perle, as there would be enough to do that with, I think.  Except... collars and scarves are double sided, and the stitch on the reverse would not be attractive, methinks.  Mind you, I could then weave the silk thread through the stitches, to give an unbroken line...that's a thought...   No, I don't know.  Fortunately, I have other things I can be doing in the interim, while I work it out.

A Less Than Perfect Day

...and it's only 2pm.  First, we discovered the bath plug doesn't work.  It's the type that you press to close, and press again to open...except that it doesn't close properly.  This wouldn't be a big deal...except that having a bath takes a great deal of energy, and it took ten minutes to get enough water for a small child, much less me, making things worse than usual.  Then the gardener broke some bit of equipment or other, and will have to come back tomorrow, meaning I'll have to be up early, as Robin has an appointment. And then, to cap it all, while finishing off cutting one of the more complex lino pieces I'm making, the knife slipped and damaged the adjacent section.  Just Great.  Hours of work ruined.  Well, okay, I can paint over the relatively small area, once I've printed it, but that's really not the point. 

So I thought I'd play with some fabric, and ended up with this.

Piece of evolon, with elements of rust dyed silk and paper.  Small element of stitch, but really, I wanted the fabric to do the talking.  I'm tempted to now add some hand stitch, to emphasise the verticals, but it would need to be very fine variegated thread, possibly silk, and to be honest, I'm not sure the piece is worth it.  Did it make me feel better?  Not really; it took me three goes to upload this image, so I think I'll just go and sulk somewhere quiet, and drink my coffee.  Which I'll probably spill.  Sigh. Definitely One Of Those Days.

Unexpected Results.

You saw Merlin making himself at home on top of this book, yesterday...it has progressed a bit since then, perhaps not as much as I would like, but nonetheless.

I realised while stitching, that this is another Purple Rain book.  There's enough of that pink paper to make a series.  This is hand made paper, and it felt stiff enough to allow it to stand up as an accordion, but not so stiff as to make it unpleasant to hand stitch.  So far, so good; all true.  What I didn't appreciate, though, was the effect of the stitch itself on the nature of the paper, or, more accurately, I suspect, the amount of handling the paper is getting in order to put that stitch in place.  The paper is going all floppy (to use that well known technical term).  When you put this amount of stitch into a quilt, it stiffens it; into a single layer of fabric, and it distorts it.  This is both distorting the paper and softening it.  It's actually reminiscent of working with Evolon, which also softens if you handle it a lot. 

I got a bit perturbed.  Here's the book, standing on its edge, to let you see how it is progressing.

I've positioned it very carefully, otherwise it looked rather like a drunk propped up against a low wall.  And I fretted about it, just a bit.  But then I remembered that this is a book; books don't routinely get propped up like this for display.   They're usually seen flat, opened and read, one page at a time.  So I stopped fretting and decided I liked the book as a book, rather than as a sculpture.  It'll be fine.

You can't see it in the image, but there's still a bit of a cat shaped indentation in that front page... I suspect it will be meeting an iron, or possibly a lot of heavy hard backed books, once I've finished the stitch.  The thread, incidentally, is hand dyed variegated silk thread with an uneven texture.  The purple strips are Khadi paper, which I'd bought to make a book with...didn't quite have this in mind, but it works.

It's A Wrap.

Not all of the work is dark and meaningful, though it does feel that way sometimes; some of it is purely experimental, the response to 'what if...' questions.  I was thinking about what I've learned so far about making textile books, and the fact that books don't have a right side and a wrong side; they are genuinely double sided, unlike quilts and embroidery, where there is a definite Right Side and a Wrong Side.  How, I thought, could  you work on both sides at once, meaningfully?  And answer there came... wrap it.  Reader, I did.

Another khadi paper accordion, dyed with the usual suspects from the natural world.  This time, I've taken thin strips of rust dyed silk; some of it was waste from a project, some cut from whole cloth.  The exception is the page in the middle, which is two strips of lutradur, stitched together with variegated hand dyed thread, some of which has been left to dangle down the page.  And then I strayed a little from the original concept, and stitched the silk to attach it to the paper (admittedly for a good reason; see below).  They are very small stitches, and I suppose I could have made them in a colour that blended with the paper, but given that I've got that central piece, with dangling thread, I wanted the rest of the pages to refer to that, somehow.  Here are the pages:

I rather like this.  It's sparse, but interesting.  It lets you contemplate the relationships between the strips, and between the strips and the paper.  I may add a word or two, but the jury's still out on that. 

Wrapping isn't a technique I'd normally associate with a book.  It's not until I stopped thinking about that piece of paper as 'a book', that I realised that wrapping would be an interesting way of approaching it. I think there might be more of these coming my way .  And finally, the back...

I particularly like that central page, the lutradur with the stitch.  It's quirky, and I do like a bit of quirky.  I wanted a bit of stitch in this, but none of this is decorative per se; it's purely functional.  In the lutradur, it's holding two strips together, so that the colour density was increased.  Elsewhere, it's holding the silk to the paper...and nothing else.  Sometimes less really is more.

Book The Third.

I said in my last post, that I'd discovered, rather belatedly, that the second book, Fragments, was 'about' ME,  about the way that it has stripped me of my ability to engage in the activities I used to, leaving me with fragments of my life.  The third book, however, was always about ME. 

I bought the silk loose weave cloth it is made from, many years ago.  I don't know why I bought it, to be truthful, I just liked the colour and the texture, so it was probably an impulse buy.  It survived the cull, which is remarkable, given how much fabric I got rid of.  It has turned out to be perfect for this particular book. 

The paper is once more dyed using onion skins, herbal teas and tannin; in fact, there are small pieces of onion skin embedded in the paper (I have no idea how that happened, but I'm grateful).  Each page represents a stage of ME.  It starts with remission, which is not quite well, but able to do most things, as long as you're careful (I was in remission for just over a year, I thought I was well, but looking back, I was doing comparatively little, and giving myself hell for being lazy.  As if.).  On each page, the cloth gets smaller, and has less substance to it, until the last page, where there is very little cloth or substance and structure remaining. 

In some ways, this is a misleading way to depict ME.  There can be a gradual decline, as the book suggests, but mostly it's unpredictable.  One day you can feel fairly energetic (by ME standards, which aren't very high), the next, you can feel dreadful, and for no apparent reason.  It makes visual sense, though, to have structured the book that way.  Who was it who said you shouldn't let reality get in the way of a good story?...or was it the truth?...but I digress.

The reverse of the book is blank, to reflect the impact I feel I have on day to day life around me.  It's true that I talk to people on Facebook, but by and large, I have very little interaction with the place I live, or the people who live there.  I'm not asking for sympathy: it's a fact.  The book simply reflects reality.

As I said elsewhere, it's inevitable that I would explore ME and ME themes in my work; it's what I've always done.  ME is seriously misunderstood; I hope that making work like this will help people to understand what it's really like.  And if someone with ME ever tells you they're 'fine', you might remember that their fine is probably one of those pages... distorted, full of holes, getting smaller all the time.  And above all, fragile.

Book The Second...

is right here...

If you remember, what I'd learned from the first one, is that scale is everything; this has been scaled down significantly.  Five simple pieces of cloth.  Two of them, at either end, are rust dyed silk.  The central piece is a scrap of transfer dyed lutradur lace.  The second piece is a very loosely woven silk cloth, not unlike scrim.  The last is a piece of natural dyed habotai silk.  The paper itself was dyed with tannin, birch bark and onion skins, which gives the lovely mottled effect, just right for this project. The book is called 'Fragments', and that is exactly what these are, oddments left over from other projects, other things.  The book gives us the opportunity to look at their beauty, individually and collectively, and restores to them a dignity that might otherwise have been lost.

Let's look at them in detail.

You might be wondering about the stitch.  It's still referring back to the Borderlines piece, certainly, but it comes originally from working with adults with learning difficulties, some years ago now, and from one girl in particular, who took to sewing like a duck to water, and pretty much refused to do anything else.  What I learned from her, was that stitch doesn't have to be regular.  It doesn't even particularly have to be functional, even when you thought that was what you were doing.  It's important in its own right.  When I got ill, she gifted me some of her work, one of the kindest gestures anyone has ever made to me, and it remains one of my most prized possessions.

And here's the reverse.

I think this piece is about memory.  The other side holds fragments of cloth, which remember being part of a larger whole.  This side invites us to contemplate the absence of cloth, to remember what that cloth was like, its colour, its texture.  I find it interesting....I hope you do, too.

Book the third, tomorrow.

PS.  I was standing in the kitchen, after posting this, and realised that this is as much about ME as it is about memory.  The fabric side is a reflection of what I have left; a life of fragments of activity, cut from the whole cloth that was my life, pre ME.  The other side is what it will be like if the condition worsens.  No activity, just the marks of where activity used to be.  Let's hope it doesn't get that bad.

Colour Blind?

No, I'm not.  But I am easily led astray.  Looking at one of my friend Angela Huddart's posts on Facebook, I remembered that I wanted to continue the series of visual haiku I had called 'Meditation in Purple And Gold'.  This little series I talked about a little here.  Each quilt was made to a strict set of rules (as a haiku is written), and each one had a piece of a particular fabric, a lovely commercial purple with gold metallic swirls.   Sadly, I don't have any more of it, so I can't make more of the same.  And as Robin is still without a job (anyone want a good FD?), I don't want to spend any money (I don't have it to spend...), so buying more of it was out of the question.  So, I went a-hunting.  For purples.  For one cloth with a large scale print (ish), one with a variety, and one that was purple and gold.  Easy, right?

No.  I don't have any.  Nothing like.  I found some purple batiks, and put one to one side, but the rest didn't work... though I did like the look of a dark grey/almost black fabric with random leaves on it, so that was put to one side also.  Then there was the interesting print with orange in it...and a cat fabric...and something else...they went to a different side (as it were...), but with the same intention, of making meditative quiltlets.

I thought for a minute that I would have to buy some fabric after all... but then thought about the hand dyes.  I hadn't used them in the meditation quilts, but thought that I might print on one with gold paint... and above is the final selection.  Yeah, okay, the hand dye is closer to pink than purple, in that section at least, but it works really nicely with the rest of the cloth.  So we shall see what we get.  And you're not getting to see the other set...I didn't take a photo.

And as I was coming out of the cloth studio, I spotted a large piece of purple organza:

Okay, more lilac, really, with interesting areas of blue.  There must be a metre and a half, maybe two metres in the length.  It is crying out to be hand stitched, possibly in gold thread.  I'm whining in my head even as I type, because I know what a pain that's going to be... but you know how it is.  When the fabric talks, the artist listens...and gets on with it.  Wish me luck, I'll need it.  But first, I need to iron it...

The Straight Debate.

Here's the first of the pieces I talked about yesterday, waiting to be worked on ;

And here it is, finished ;

I think it's rather fun.  The cat button was part of a set by Button Mad, which my sister gave me for Christmas, while the boat and duck buttons were left over from clothes I made for my son when he was wee.  A family piece...I think it'll end up with Cara, my granddaughter.  Unless someone makes me an offer I can't refuse...


I showed it to Robin who said, it's nice...but the edges aren't right.  To me, the edges are Just Fine.  Most people, he said, would want them to be straight.   Now, I can get them to do flat, which is important, I think...but I'm not so sure about straight.  I like the country, primitive, sketchy feel that the frayed edges give...as if this piece was a fragment of a larger piece.  It adds texture and visual interest.  What do you think?

Negative Thinking...

affects us all, whether we admit it or not, whether we're depressed or not (though depression does make it rather worse...).  One of my favourites is that I'm lazy, that I don't work hard enough.  And then, as I did today, I go to tidy the studio and realise that it's not strictly speaking true... I just get diverted a lot.  There is, however, a lot of work around...  I picked up these five pieces that had been kicking around the studio (out of a Rather Substantial Pile), waiting for something... In this case, I think they had been waiting for me to get back into hand sewing.

Clockwise from top left is a piece of silk, with yarns and other pieces of silk needlefelted onto it.  Then there is a piece of Evolon which has been printed using one of my hand cut lino blocks, then transfer dyed, then stitched.  Below that, there is a piece of transfer dyed lutradur, fused onto crinkled paper (I think that one is probably upside down in this image).  Fourth, is a piece of shibori painted nylon beneath a piece of transfer dyed lutradur, with a lot of stitch, and finally, a transfer dyed monoprint. All of these pieces need more stitch, except the fourth one, which needs embellishment, I think with tiny lutradur flowers, and maybe some three dimensional leaves... we'll see.

I like all of these pieces, but have a sneaky preference for the first one...though I'm fond of the monoprint, too.  Guess that's my Easter weekend sorted out....what with warping up the peg loom, and starting the rug, and possibly buying a couple of plants (well, it's traditional, right?).  If you celebrate it, have a very Happy Easter.  And don't worry; a girl (or boy) really can't have too much chocolate!

Getting Rusty...

...or maybe that should be, rustier... I found quite a lot of the rust dyed silk, and I'm working my way through it.  I stitched this a couple of nights ago, a very simple little piece.  The shape of the rust motif just begged to be turned into a flower, a daisy of sorts, perhaps... and the 'stem' is made from semi felted hand dyed yarn.  After the frenzy of stitch that was the last piece I showed you, I think this is a great reminder that often, less is more.

Some of the rust dyed silk isn't terribly interesting, though, so I have taken a couple of smaller pieces and bundled them up with onion skins, oak leaves and birch bark (I almost typed birk barch..err.. birk works, barch, though, doesn't, except as slang (look it up...)).  Here's one of them...

Because it's such a small piece, I confess that I just popped in what was lying around from a previous bundling session.  I like working in that kind of random way, not knowing what will appear.  It's how I work in general.  It's fun.

Rewriting History...

or, in this case, restitching a piece.   I told you here that I intended to take some of the stitching in one of my rusted pieces out, so that I could do it again; well, once I'd started, I couldn't stop.  All of it, gone.  This particular piece was the third that I'd made of rust dyed silk, in what I thought was a series called 'Flotsam'.  The first I've already shown you, but I'm going to show it here, too, for the sake of comparison.

The second, framed in a similar way, is this one;

I used very little stitch, just enough to keep it interesting, in the same thread that I used in the third piece.  I clearly intended to make the second and third pieces very similar in nature, as the latter also had very little stitch in it.  But while the second piece has flow to it, encouraged by the stitch, the third piece didn't,  The stitch seemed to create little stagnant pools of stillness, which weren't good to look at.  I was happy enough about it at the time...but with hindsight, it just Didn't Work.

This was what it looked like before...

And... here is the final version (believe me, I'm not taking this lot out again!).

Much more stitch this time.  The piece feels very lively, as a result.  I decided that I preferred it the other way round, and as the piece of mother of pearl came off during the process, I turned it over to give a bit more contrast between it and the background.  The thread is a lovely variegated hand dyed brown with hints of gold and yellow.

I work often in series.  What I hadn't realised was that that can be a curse, as well as a blessing  In this case, I was so busy linking this piece with what had gone before it, that I failed to look at the piece itself, and see what it needed.  I've done that now, and I'm pleased with it.  And oddly enough, it links very nicely with the original starting place of the series...so there is a natural, rather than a forced, connection.  All in all, a useful piece of learning.

Bundling Up...

is a good idea in the winter (it's a three jumper day round here)... but  eco printers do it all year round!  I was given India Flint's book on natural dyeing for Christmas, and a week ago, I followed her instructions for 'cold bundling'.  This technique basically involves putting plant materials onto damp cloth, wrapping them up tight, and leaving them for at least a week, or as long as you can bear it... the longer the better, really... before unwrapping them to expose the colour, letting them dry, then ironing.  Ecoprinting, in a nutshell..  Of course, there's a lot more to it than that... but for my first attempt, I used red and brown onion skins and tops, the top of a red pepper (I didn't think that would work, and I don't think it did...), and some tea.  I tied them up with fishing line, and left them for a week.  This is what I found when I went to check them today.

The one on the left is reminiscent of a haggis... as you can see, the one at the right is not terribly well wrapped... I'm not the tidiest of workers...  My intention had been to take a photograph, and then leave them a bit longer; and then I spotted the mould.  Reader, I panicked.  So... I unwrapped them, and they are currently drying off.  The one on the left is silk, the other one is cotton, and the difference is clear.

Here is a close up of the silk... the dark flecks are tea leaves, still hanging on; they will brush off when it's dry (I hope!).

The variety of colour isn't really showing well in a photograph; I'm quite pleased with it, though, and think it will make an interesting little quilted piece.  There are reddish sections where there were red onion skins, but they show much better on the cotton (there were more of them in this bundle);

There is much more overall colour on the silk piece, but it was much smaller than the cotton.  I think I have a lot to learn about this particular process, but I'm happy enough with my first attempt...watch this space to see what I (eventually) do with it.  It is a slow process; it will have to sit for a couple of weeks before it is rinsed, and then I will be able to do something with it.  

Now to try ivy... 

What To Do...

with my silk... that is the question...    Sorry, Hamlet.

These are the two larger pieces of rust dyed silk; there are other odd bits, but these are fairly substantial.  The top one was made using a very rusty gate; the other, I suspect, using a selection of odds and sods.  I'm having an argument with myself (nothing new there, huh?)...though actually, I think I've found a compromise for the first piece, at least.  The top piece, I want to cut in half, and work as a diptych; here's what one half will look like.  

The second, though, isn't so cohesive, and therefore, not as easy to decide.  Looking at the image, rather than the real thing (a good way of distancing oneself from the actual work), I find myself wondering if I should leave it as a wholecloth, and hand stitch patterning into it, working as if it was a painting, a mark here, a mark there, creating pattern and cohesion.  Or I may cut it in half (note to self, not quarters, you have enough small pieces lying around!!), and use other natural dyestuffs to add colour and pattern on one half, and simply stitch the other.  Decisions, decisions.  Any thoughts?

This is part of the half that I'd stitch; plenty visual interest here.  

There is, of course, another option, and that is to leave both of them alone, and simply stretch them.  If the silk wasn't so fine, I might have done, but I think stitch is the better option; layering and stitching will support the silk.. so, watch this space.  All comments and suggestions welcome, as always..

New Directions.

Firstly of course, Happy (if belated) New Year!  Our festive season introduced us to a new person, our grand daughter, Cara, who was born shortly before Christmas...here she is on her quilt...well, okay, half her quilt...

The quilt features some of my hand dyes, as well as some hand painted and printed fabric, along with a mixture of commercial fabrics.  I wanted to make something that represents my creative life, as well as something pretty..I think I achieved what I wanted to  The quilting is different in every block, featuring hearts and flowers, as well as a doll like shape, plus some stylised Macintosh roses, for a Scottish baby.  Though Charles Rennie was credited with these, it was, in fact, his wife, Margaret MacDonald, also an artist, who designed such  motifs.  She was a skilled artist, working in textiles and other media.  I hope she'd approve of my use of her motif.  More information about her is to be found here.

But I digress.  As usual.

Last year was difficult, for a variety of reasons, and it looks like this year will be little different.  I've been struggling with the demon depression, and my lovely husband has been struggling with unemployment, also a demon, with its own nasty consequences.  So this year is the year where I don't spend any money, but try to be as creative as possible with what I have, and with what surrounds me.  What I have, is quite substantial; like all quilters, I've got a substantial stash of cloth and threads.  And plenty of ideas about what to do with them!

I've been inspired, recently, by the work of a new Facebook friend, Fabienne Dorsman-Rey; check out some work and an artist's statement by her here .  She kindly suggested the book 'Eco Colour' by India Flint as a starting point, and I was given it for Christmas..  So, any dyeing I do this year, is likely to be of the natural variety.  But I had already started down that path a couple of years ago; if you are familiar with the book 'Exquisite Evolon', you will know that I give instructions for rust dyeing that most flexible of fabrics.  Mainly, though, I have rust dyed silk and cotton, and started a series of work called 'Flotsam', featuring hand stitched rust dyed silk with found objects.  This is the first of the series;

...and here is a detail;

I'm particularly fond of the piece of wood at the bottom of this image; its textures seem to echo the textures created by the hand stitching.  I started out machine stitching this piece, but soon realised that it just didn't look right to me.  Machine stitching gives a hard, regular line, regardless of how you vary the stitch length within the line.  That seemed lacking in the subtlety that the cloth shows, so I removed it, and started again by hand.  I think the piece has benefited from it, regardless of how long it takes.   It is, of course, a good thing to pick up and put down, and to take with me on journeys.  I find myself using hand stitch more and more, either in conjunction with machine stitch, or on its own.  It feels very personal.

So, I have looked out two large pieces of rust dyed silk... more in my next post.