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

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