Another UFO
I’ve been finding long-hidden projects again.
This one is a cotton fabric bag with a strip of aida inserted in one side, which I think was a subscribers’ gift for Needlecraft magazine, some time in the distant past. In DevaStitch Designs days, I created a range inspired by the Bizarreware of Clarice Cliff (with the approval of Wedgwood, the rights holders), and I suspect that my original idea for the design was to add it to the range.
And then something happened and the bag disappeared into a box for what feels like centuries. I’ve found it again, and this time I am determined to finish the wretched thing, and start using it.
It has become clear that the aida is slightly off-grain, but it’s not likely to show when the piece is in use. If I were to make a bag with a cross stitched element I would work the cross stitch separately and apply it afterwords, so that the straight grain was indeed straight.
The first thing to do was to finish the black outlines, which are such a distinctive part of the Clarice Cliff style, and which will make everything else simply a matter of colouring in.
I had to invent a bush or two, because my chart didn’t cover all the fabric I had available, but once the windmill and extra bushes were in place I continued with the sky.
Then I got slightly tired of blue and gave myself a bit of a rest by filling in the windmill. I have more to do, of course, but I think it will be quite cheerful when it is finished.
SlowTV Stitchery Episode 31 is now live, in which progress continues to be made, and some thought is given (again) to the eventual mounting of the piece.
Yes, very cheerful! If aida picture looks skew-whiff after it’s done, perhaps a border of black ribbon would hide that and give a clean, smart finish?
I don’t remember getting that bag from Needlecraft. I stopped subscribing after a couple of years and just bought the issues that had something of particular interest. I still use their subscribers’ stork scissors as my travelling pair and I still have their gold-plated needles in a little box. It was a good magazine.
🙂 A cheerful bag! Love the colorful trees.
Thoroughly enjoying seeing your UFOs come creeping out of the woodwork, they make me feel so much better about mine – I rather think that yours are both better stitched and more likely to get finished!
I keep meaning to ask you, what is the thread you are using to couch down the gold in the Amarna family? It looks gold and shiny, but behaves much better than I’d expect gold shiny thread to behave. I hope you are getting closer to a resolution about how to mount/frame/present them? And also about what details you will put in and what might (no no noooooo) need unpicking! (nothing in my view, but you are more aware of what you are trying to achieve, whereas we viewers are just delighted by what you have achieved)
It is nice to find, work on and completed old UFOs. We really need to be able to turn a leaf now and then, to see the we are going forward. Especially in times when the hope of a bright future is far away.
Very cheery!
Nice to resurect a project – any project!
What a colourful design. I think I have a few unfinished projects in the back of the cupboard too!
It’s scary how many unfinished projects are lurking around in hidden corners. Many of them are good to come back to, especially when working on long current projects, a quick finish Spurs you on.