More inspiration from other sources

 I joined the TextileArtist.org Stitch Club earlier in the year and have been lurking on the site, not taking up most of the challenges but still being inspired by the initial tutorial and then the amazing responses by other members. 

I have - finally - tried one of the ideas. It was by Sabine Kaner. She suggested getting a piece of paper and crumpling it, then flattening it out and tracing some of the creases to create an abstract design. 

I thought that this was an interesting idea and that it wouldn't take too much creative energy to give it a go. 

I ended up with a design that I thought was doable. I traced it onto some calico and coloured it with Inktense Pencils. 

The pencils were much brighter after I used a wet brush to spread the colour around. 

After several weeks of it lying around, I then decided that perhaps I could use the same design for some blackwork embroidery. I traced the design onto even weave fabric using a water soluble marker (remembering, from past sad experience, not to let the sun shine on it!).

Many hours later, I now have a blackwork piece. I suppose it is really a sampler, as I was filling it in with various stitches and threads. I based it on my nightly doodles and just decided to see what developed as I sewed. 

The initial design had quite a few small spaces that didn't really suit the blackwork patterns, so I changed the design a little. 

In the meantime, I still had the calico. The initial impetus, in the Stitch Club, is to do hand embroidery but I thought I would try out some of the decorative stitches on my machine. The blackwork was taking ages and I needed to do something quicker. The blackwork designs influenced the patterns I chose

. 

Justifying my design

 As I posted recently, I based my latest small tapestry on water. 

A few days ago I took some pictures that totally related to it. So the inspiration came after the event. Well, I looked at the water and thought - that's what I was thinking while I was weaving!

I have started another small collage but am not completely happy with it. As I'm not sure exactly what to do next, I haven't done any more. I'll have to see what will come to me. 

Just had to post today, so many 2s. 2/12/2020

Finding inspiration in unexpected places

As I mentioned earlier, I have been working on a small woven tapestry for the upcoming AusNZ online tapestry group's 2021 challenge.

The theme this year is Weaving Water. I have a LOT of pictures with water in them! Because of lockdown and only being able to walk for an hour a day (for a couple of months) I have been along various paths along the Yarra River. It is always brown water. Apparently it is due to the clay soil. 

I just noticed that I started it about a month ago, not a bad timeline for me. Maybe because of the lockdown I have given it more time than I would have normally. 

It is quite abstract, based on a piece of paper with paint smeared on it, ready to be cut up for collage. It is also in a landscape format and the tapestry is square. I also managed to turn the image upside down at one stage and it took me a while to work out why my, not very carefully done, cartoon didn't seem to be working. So then I ditched the cartoon and just looked at the image and tried to put in what I thought it was looking like, not what it actually looked like. 

It was a very relaxing way to be weaving - no good image to follow, no right or wrong bits (apart from some bits that just didn't feel right and got pulled out). 

I went for a walk along Darebin Creek this week - without a mask!! Hooray! The water was running fast because of recent rain and was also brown. It reminded me greatly of the tapestry which is almost finished.

                                         

Random things

 Today is 30/10/20. 

It looks a bit like we won't be having much Halloween around here, not that that bothers me, it is not a traditional holiday here. But the Christmas trees appeared this week, in the local shopping centre. 

Hasn't anyone told them that Christmas is a couple of months away??

We also have a plant growing that might be totally appropriate for Halloween, it stinks! It smells like something has died.

Stink Lily, Dragon Flower and other names. 

We were out tracing the smell to the flowers that have opened and have the incredible smelling stamens. The smell makes it rather easy, flies were already hanging around. It does get you talking to the neighbours and passers-by. 

The flowers look like they should be good for ecodyeing but I am not sure that I will get around to that practice again in the near future. Maybe I can put some of them in the freezer, once they start to die down. I really love the look of them, just not the smell. Apparently the smell only lasts for a day but several flowers can mean several days of smell!

Starting a new idea

 I have decided that it is time to start a new small tapestry. That is the benefit of having a group that organises a yearly challenge. It gives me something to think about. 

And the group that usually meets once a month is now meeting on Zoom and has decided to show our progress at the beginning of November. So I had better have an idea! Only some of us participate in the challenge, it is organised by another online group. Others will have different things for show and tell. Actually, Zoom means that we all get a turn and it is really quite orderly, unlike our usual chats and comings and goings, which are wonderful in a different way.

The theme is Weaving Water: so many ideas come to mind. But I had worked down to one image.

I played with it in PhotoShop to make it slightly easier to see how to weave it. 

It is of the Yarra after rain - very brown water. It will be a challenge not to put any blue in, if I decide to use this image. Even the sky wasn't blue. 

Then I started going through the papers that I painted, earlier in the year, for the paper collages I did with Tara Axford in her online course. I thought it might help me get a clearer idea of how to weave it if I did a collage first. 

I came across some papers I had just smeared paint on to a gelli plate and saw water! And one of them really appeals to me. So now I will have to decide what to do ... That will slow me down again. 

It doesn't look as good here as in reality but it still evokes water for me. 

It is exciting to have found something to inspire me. I won't make a decision immediately - I have been told I am a very slow starter - but I am tending to think that I might prefer to do an abstract image. I am always trying to do abstract but never quite get there. 

I can see some interesting yarns could be included in my more abstract idea. Decisions, decisions. 

As it is a lovely day today, and we can go out for an unspecified amount of time, I'll go for a walk and let the decision be made later. 

In the meantime, I could warp up the loom. I know the dimensions that are for the challenge: 20cm x 20cm. Not that I will necessarily do it square, that can be a difficult shape to make look good. 

UFOs

 20/10/20 - I have to post today!

I am in several online textile groups and people have been doing all sorts of things. One that caught my eye the other day was someone who had got out some UFOs and was actually (gasp) finishing them. 

That started me remembering: I have several pieces that range from the mid-1980s to earlier this year. I got out one, a hand pieced log cabin double bed quilt - it is HUGE because I must have thought that bedspreads went to the ground on beds, I think I was remembering the old chenille bedspreads that did (if I am actually remembering correctly). 

It is made up of many, many pieces of fabric. Polyester fabrics were all the go in those days, so it has a mix of pure cotton and polycottons, probably some polyester too. Fortunately, that won't matter much as they were all sewn onto a backing block, so differences in fabric weight and, hopefully, shrinking rates should not come into consideration. 

The method was to draw up a grid on the backing fabric, then cut the top layer into strips, fold them in half and line them up with the grid. Then you cut the strips to be the length  you want to fill in the next part of the grid. You sew along the fold, lined up with the grid and then folded the piece over and lay the next piece of fabric over that - you end up with three layers of fabric. This is a very effective method, easy to do. But ... if your quilt is large, it weighs a LOT. I weighed mine last night - two and a half kilos!! And that is without the batting or a backing piece. 

Now it will either go back into the cupboard or I will try to finish it off. 

One idea is to put felt on the back, doing away with the wadding/batting and backing fabric altogether, and using it as a throw on a couch. Another suggestion, (I asked some of the people at my Zoom meeting for the Embroiderers Guild's Creative Play group today) to use it as a floor rug. Another is to unpick it and make some smaller quilts. 

All too hard today! At least I have seen it again and will let some ideas run around in my head. I'll have to source some felt or backing of some sort that will be big enough too!

Another good date - and lots of sorting

 Well, I know what I might be doing for the next year, or until the Covid19 virus lockdowns ease. 

I will be sorting!!

I started with the threads and yarns, then I moved on to the threads that are specifically for hand embroidery. All beautifully colour co-ordinated. I seem to have a lot of autumn colours, especially green!! Considering that I don't do that much hand embroidery, I do have a lot of thread. Some of is years and years old!! 

Now I am moving on to the shelves that have old books, street directories, bits of painted and coloured paper. I have them for those brief moments that collage takes my fancy. It isn't that often but it is another way of coming up with designs. So I will move them out of my room, into a box, then go through them at another time. By then, I might know if I will ever use them again. 

Mind you, that 'other room' is starting to look a bit daunting. 

I could sit down and go through some of them now but that would distract me from the job I am currently working on, which is just to move things and see what is there. I might even (gasp) throw some stuff out. 

I am working on the 2 minute rule - I think I 'should' do some cleaning up so I will give it 2 minutes. Then, if I feel like it, I might go a little longer. Sometimes I just do the two minutes, sometimes 2 hours. Or more. 

This is not a quick fix, it is a way of making it doable. And the other advantage is that I get to see things that I found interesting in the past and, maybe, get inspired to try again. That has been especially true of the yarns, threads and ribbons. 

I have a box of dried leaves and plants that I picked up earlier in the year, when I was enthusiastically embracing the Tara Axford workshop (online). I am getting some glimmerings of interest again and am glad that I have kept them. The ones that don't crumble when I pick them up could be new inspiration. But I do have to find a better way and place to keep them. 

The other good thing about today? I know what day it is! I totally thought it was Tuesday yesterday. But today is Thursday - 15/10/20.

Sewing on the coloured Shiva Oil Stick fabric.

 I have been reminded that I should post today, it being 10/10/20 (hi Liz!).

So here it is ...

I have done a little bit of random blackwork (except not black) on the fabric. I am still using the threads I have at home, it still being lockdown and no shops open and no going further than 5km from home. I could buy online but I tried that and didn't know enough about the threads to know how thick they would be, what sort of sheen, how they have been plied, etc. So I will wait until I can actually see them in reality, not virtually. 

And I do have enough to go on with. 

I also used some linen I bought recently (online) and other pieces that I have had for years. I don't even know what some of the fabrics I have experimented with lately are. Therefore, I didn't know what threads would work with the various fabrics. All play, all interesting. 

So ... I decided to just try a few of the patterns from various books and an online resource that I printed out a few years ago. I ended up doing my own variations, not because I wanted original designs but because I  was having trouble getting them right. 

Trying to do the patterns randomly, associated with the randomly placed colours (I had no plan, just wanted to see if it would work on linen), has meant that I am not too bothered about choosing the perfect pattern for the image. Also, it is hard to see the thread at times, it blends in rather well.

The yellow thread is very fine compared to the others and a bit hard to see - whilst sewing and afterwards. I spent quite a while on it and was wondering why I was bothering! But the light does shine on it and pick up some texture. The orange and yellow are Wonderfil threads that I have bought for the sewing machine. The thicker orange one (konfetti) is not much good in the machine, it is a bit thick , so I am glad to have found a new use for it. The yellow (Spaghetti) is good in the machine , not so much on coloured linen. 

The green thread is DMC that I bought online recently and haven't used yet. I got it from Lazy Daisy, which has gone totally online these days. 

I discovered that the colour didn't go through the fabric, so I can see perfectly well on the back. I did have to get my head around doing the pattern properly on the underside and not going over spaces that I had already done, something that is sometimes necessary when you are doing the designs. Usually, you don't see that side, it is on the back. But the back was the front - confusing much? 

Just doing random patterns, for random distances, was very freeing. Also, the coloured background made it almost impossible to see mistakes - there are one or two but I don't really care, they are very hard to notice. 

Using Shiva Oil Sticks on Linen

I finished my piece using my faulty design and inattention. 

I just decided it was finished - 'based on' the original drawing on graph paper. 

Then I got out the small piece of linen I had drawn on using Shiva Oil Paint Sticks. The instructions said to draw on the fabric and then leave it for 4 or 5 days to set. Having Corona virus inertia, that was easy. I actually left it for 6 days. When I picked it up, I rubbed it on some white paper and got a faint smudge on the paper where some of the oil rubbed off. 

Then I heat set it, with the iron, hand washed it and let it dry.  It didn't rub off anymore. And I noticed that the little bits of thickish substance were no longer there. 

Today I decided to try some embroidery on it. It was harder than I had anticipated. I sewed my design at least four times, possibly five. I found that I had a bit of trouble seeing the fabric clearly enough to be perfectly accurate. Eventually, I noticed that the back of the fabric is not very coloured at all, so I could sew from the back.

The reason I had to pull it out was not to do with the fabric being coloured, it was that I chose a design that I couldn't get my head around. I really need to stick to the easier patterns. 

What I have discovered though, is that the paint stick stayed on the fabric throughout the drama. You could see where I had pulled it out on the back but the front didn't show it up at all. 

I could only find links to the produce through various stores. Here is one.

Aargh!

 Date today: 5/10/20

I decided to try out one of my graph paper designs with variegated thread today - for the blackwork course. 

I was well into it when I noticed that I hadn't done the design properly, it is meant to be symmetrical. 

Ah well, it is my own design, I can change it if I like. 

Then ... I discovered that my graphed design isn't accurate!! One side has 5 blocks for the line, the other (supposedly symmetrical) has 4!! So now I am just winging it, will see what develops as I sew. 

The white part of the thread isn't very good, it doesn't show up at all. So I am cutting those bits off and will see if I can find another use for them. Waste not, want not - especially in these lockdown days. 

Fabric Paint that works like dye

 It being 2/10/20, I had to post today!

And I have something of interest - to me, anyway.

As part of the Blackwork course I am doing, we were asked to play with some colouring of the fabric. I know that dyes for plant-based fabrics usually mean you have to mordant the fabric and, honestly, I just couldn't be bothered. 

But then I saw an article in Embellish magazine, about using paint on fabric (except I didn't realise that it was paint at first, it looked like silk painting with dyes). 

The article was interesting. The person who wrote it has done several articles in this magazine over the last few years and I have read them with mild interest. But this one happened to co-incide with the need to colour my linen (or linen-cotton in some cases). 

I contacted her and bought some of her fabric paints: Liquid Radiance. It also happened that she was running a free workshop on Zoom that I could 'attend'. So I did! 

The paints have worked well on the linen and I have had a small play with using coloured (variegated) threads and black threads. I have, once again, only used what I had seeing we still can't go to the shops - they aren't open yet! 

I only used red, yellow and blue. They travel and mix well. They can be put on dry fabric or dampened. Some fabrics didn't work very well dry, especially if they had not been prewashed. The fabric sometimes resisted the water soaking in. 

This piece was so small I had to attach it to some calico to put it in the hoop. 

The paint makes the fabric a tiny bit stiffer, which isn't a bad thing, I think it is less likely to fray. 

Some of the darker patches were a little bit harder to see for the embroidery but, overall, it was successful. 

I have done some samples, now to see if I can come up with a design. 

I did also play with some Shiva Oil sticks but haven't tried to sew on that fabric yet. The colours are nice and strong and I have heat set and washed it, which did get rid of some of the residue. 

Not having any idea of what I was wanting to achieve, I just rubbed on some colour and now need to play with some sewing. If it shows up, the colour is rather strong. 

Just Because I Had It

 As part of the Blackwork course I am doing, we are being encouraged to play with textile multi-media. I started painting on some linen and using Shiva Oil Sticks but more on that later - if it works at all. I had heard that someone has done some blackwork onto felting. Hmm, how is that done? Turns out you make the felt then place some linen over it and do the blackwork through it all. Then you pull out the linen. Not having any felt to hand, and not feeling like making any, I looked around. 

Lo and behold, I had some silk paper, with Angelina Fibre in it, lying around. Why not try?? 

So I found a small piece of linen - didn't want to do a big piece in case it was a disaster. 

It is the Embroiderers Guild, Victoria's 60th anniversary this year and the theme was, surprise, surprise, Diamonds. I found some images online and thought I would try them on graph paper. The designs didn't work well in that format, the angles were not right. 

Feeling a bit impatient, I then decided to just draw the diamond shape onto the fabric using a water soluble pen. The pen has a relatively thick nib (thick for blackwork, anyway). So I had to guess where some of the spaces ended. I also didn't do it all that carefully, so the shape isn't exactly symmetrical. 

I then placed the linen over the silk paper and started sewing. As I did a small design, the spaces were small, I had to choose small patterns. I varied the thickness of the threads to give a bit of difference. I also left some spaces empty - not only to hasten things but for aesthetic reasons too. But it did hasten things. 

When I pulled out the linen, some of the sewing caught in it because I had gone through it when sewing. Most of the sewing was ok but a few stitches did pull. Pulling out the threads also distorted some of the sewing so it doesn't look particularly like blackwork. Ah well, it was just an experiment. I am not unhappy with it, I just don't know what I would do with this sort of thing. This piece is going into my folder. 

Maybe I should call it a rough diamond. 

Experimenting with colouring linen for blackwork embroidery

Our final lesson for the blackwork course I am doing is about colouring the fabric and then doing some embroidery on it. We were asked to colour some calico but I haven't really understood why, unless the teacher thinks that most of the participants will not have coloured fabric before. 

It was also suggested that we use acrylic paint. But I have found that when I use that the fabric handles quite differently, quite stiffly. 

I have decided to play with the colouring of fabric a bit differently. So far, I have used Inktense blocks, the small ones, that look like sticks, and ink.  It has been interesting to find information about using them on fabric. Usually, the articles are about using Inktense pencils and blocks for quilting. We use even weave linen for blackwork. Here is one I found that is about dyeing the fabric for cross-stitch. As I found no information about that, I have decided that linen is a plant-based fabric, not all that different from cotton, so will just assume it is in the same category. 

Today I played with small bits of fabric. I used some that was not washed, presumably has size on it, and some that I washed. Then I tried the Inktense blocks with dry fabric, dampened fabric and dampened blocks. They gave different results. I think the best way to go will be with the dampened fabric because there is less smearing of colour - which will be less likely to come off on the embroidery threads, I hope. 

I have also tried some inks on the fabric, also dampened and not. I don't know if the inks will be permanent but I will heat set them when they are dry. Some sites have recommended leaving the dyes and inks for 72 hours, so I won't iron them till then. Then I may wash them to see if the colour stays. I have only done small fragments of fabric - partly because I don't have a lot of blackwork suitable fabrics and partly because it is relatively expensive and hard to get at the moment with lockdown still in force. Therefore it is possible that I won't bother with the rinsing. I am only playing around with colouring fabric, not with coming up with something that will be permanent and for sale. 

This one is inks on the fabric, resting on a towel that has been used before. Maybe it will be useful in the future, given its absorbance of colours. 

I don't quite know what I am trying to achieve - in terms of a sample. So I will play around, find out some things and then see if I can come up with a piece of fabric that will inspire me to do some interesting embroidery. 

Warmer Weather

 As I was sitting in the lovely sunshine, working diligently on my latest blackwork piece (an actual piece, not a sampler) I noticed some movement outside the window. 

Instant reaction was to be very alert. What is that??

Then I saw the legs - phew. 

Around here we have notices in the parks that warn that the snake season is from October to March but we have noticed over recent years that they are out and about from September to April these days. I think I will not need to be as vigilant these days since our dog has died. But our exercise regime is currently to be out of the house for an hour a day, no more than 5km from home, so we are going to lots of parks that I probably wouldn't go to without Penny. There are so many people out in the parks that the snakes are probably hiding a lot more - I hope so. 

Penny died at the beginning of this pandemic, it is her 6 month anniversary. Life has changed drastically. We still miss her but we are grateful that she hasn't been old and ill during this difficult period. 

She would have been barking madly at the lizard today. She would have been keeping the rats out of our garden too. Rumour has it that the rats have migrated from the city to the suburbs, looking for cafes but are finding our veggie gardens instead. Perhaps our next dog, if we ever get one, will have to be a terrier. 

New design

 After struggling to come up with a design I liked, using the fabrics I have at home (still no going to the shops), I came up with a new baby quilt. 

It is using some fabric I must have had for decades. I think it was supposed to be border fabric but they would have been rather large borders. So maybe it wasn't border fabric. Doesn't matter, really. I have made it into blocks on a quilt. 

The baby was born today! 

Thank goodness for the internet.

 Thank goodness for generous people who show you how to do things too. 

I have spent HOURS trying to do a mitred corner for a sample for the Blackwork course I am doing. We were given notes, we had to practise using paper but I just could not get my head around it today (and yesterday!). 

I eventually found a good link that made it clearer with images. If we were in normal times I would have attended classes and been shown in person. But I have only had notes so far. So the internet has been a Godsend. 

However, I have tried it again, using paper, and am still a bit bamboozled. Sometimes I can do it, sometimes I can't. 

So I think that, if given the choice, I will NEVER do a mitred corner for blackwork. 

Our teacher finally called me and talked me through her process. Success: I have the corner done but as I didn't want to waste fabric if I got it wrong again, I didn't have a big enough piece to do all corners. However, I did try using the sewing machine zigzag stitch on the edge instead of hand sewing it. I think I would use a less regular stitch if I did it again so that the sewing isn't all along one thread which might pull off too easily. 

And I used the sample to try the hemstitch, one direction with the thread pulled out and one without. This really is a sampler!

Try again

 Well, the quilt top wasn't what was wanted! It is a bit too strong for a baby. 

I did try laying it out differently, in diagonal lines and it looks quite good. I forgot to take a picture though. I may make it bigger, once I have the baby quilt out of the way, and keep it for myself or a family member who might like to take it to the football, if we ever get to go again. We go to the MCC, which regularly has large crowds, not sure that will happen in the near future. Not that the football season will go there this year. Hopefully, by March, we will be able to have some matches here in Victoria. But some of our matches have 80,000 people, which suggests that social distancing will be a problem. Wait and see. 

But for now, back to the drawing board. I got out some of my fabrics that have motifs that might do for a baby and started working on another idea. I found some free baby quilt patterns here. 

Unfortunately, I don't have much suitable fabric left from my quilting days. I found some bright dinosaur fabric and tried that but cut it the wrong size and used up too much of the fabric - aargh! 

I tried it with several different iterations but none work. And it is still rather strong colour-wise. 

So I'll have another go at a much more muted one later. Seeing it is a boy and seeing I have quite a lot of blues, I will go down the boring colour theme. Probably. 

I am really only posting because of the date: 20/08/20. 

Using leftover squares for another baby quilt.

 I made a small quilt for a baby about 18months ago and, because he was born 5 weeks early, got carried away in the rush of things and cut way too much fabric. 

Now I have another baby quilt to make. Easy decision to use those leftover pieces (with still some left!). I have been told that the baby is being born into a Hawthorn supporting family (AFL club) so I only used the yellow squares and cut up some brown fabric I had. 

Because there were some already cut, I didn't have to find the pattern or work out the size, I just copied what I had. They were 5" square (seeing most of my quilting equipment is in imperial measurement, I usually use inches rather than metric). 

I sprayed the fabrics with starch as that makes them sit better for cutting and sewing, especially on the bias. 

I cut them all out and drew a line diagonally across the middle, then sewed them, using the quarter inch foot, on both sides of the line. I cut them along the line afterwards, giving me lovely triangles. Using the board that has sandpaper as one surface ensures that the fabric doesn't move. 

I trimmed the corners off all the squares.

I have laid them out but will leave them till tomorrow and look at it with fresh eyes, to see if there are any glaring areas that I will want to change around. It may look different in daylight too. 

I am writing the process down in a bit more detail this time as I needed to look at my previous post and photos to see exactly what I had done. This being my visual diary, I think I need to put in more information so that I can easily find it in the future. 

So far, so good. 

It has been a good change from working on my blackwork course, I find I move around much more when doing a quilt. The sitting still for the embroidery is much harder on the neck and back. 

Still going

 I noticed the date today and thought: I should have blogged yesterday - 12/8/20. But I have just looked up the world clock and it is still the 12th somewhere in the world. 

We have moved on to working with coloured threads for our blackwork. 

I am feeling ambitious with this as we can use a solid colour or variegated and we have also been asked to do some with deliberate colour changes (as opposed to random variegated). But I will try to get the minimum done before I launch off into trialling lots of permutations. 

As you can see, the different textures of the various threads cause different effects. The pink is a soft Anchor thread, maybe a bit thicker than I would like. 

The grey is DMC Perle 12 and worked the best so far. It has a lovely sheen. 

The purple is Wonderfill Spaghetti yarn, Egyptian cotton. I bought it to use in the bobbin of my sewing machine. It is too thick for the needle at the top. It is an ok thickness for the blackwork but tends to get fuzzy, especially when you have to pull it out, as I frequently do. 

The sitting still is continuing to cause me some back and neck problems but I am being more aware of it now and trying to only do a little bit at a time.

I have even enrolled for an online Zoom dance class for 55+ people. It started with people from all over the east coast but now seems to only have Melbourne people in it at the moment (I wonder why??). It is a way to get moving without using up your hour of outdoor activity. I can still go for a walk later, weather permitting (it has been lovely so far but some rain is forecast and I can't complain, we don't want another drought and/or huge bushfire season). 

Band samplers

 Our next block of work in Blackwork is to do some coloured embroidery, in band samplers. 

I have found it hard to find much about what these are, most of my embroidery books, of which I do not have a lot, do not mention band samplers. 

It doesn't help that when I went onto the computer, I was initially looking up bandwork embroidery in blackwork. Autocorrect and other such things kept giving me handwork! 

Then I found something that mentioned band samplers. Now I have found some information! I probably didn't really have to look it up, we were given some images to inspire us. But I was interested to know what made these 'band samplers' rather than the other samplers we have been doing. 

One article I read says that band samplers were made as a way of recording and passing on designs, before printing became common. Also, young girls were usually the embroiderers and it was a way of educating them as they sometimes had letters and they would have had some discussion about the meanings of the patterns (I assume). 

I am still not certain I really know but I think I just have to work my designs in bands. 

We have done a sample of motifs, of our own design or copied; border and corner patterns; shading ideas using either different thicknesses of thread or density of pattern changing. So I assume I will be ok with border patterns as they will work well in bands. 

I will have to go through my cottons now, see what colours I have. 

I have mostly stranded cottons, in a large variety of colours but we have been advised that stranded cotton is difficult because the needle can separate the strands and make the blackwork not sit properly. So I'll have to go through all my other yarns and see what I have. 

In this strange time of lockdown I can't go to a shop to browse. I have done an online order but had to rely on the images which, as a tactile textile person, isn't as satisfactory. And I have to wait for it to arrive. Still, it could be fun to go through stuff, as long as I don't make too big a mess before having to pack it away again.