Tag: Mystery
Mystery Finished
Remember this?
I found it on the blocking board and decided that it would be Finished And Done this year.
One of the reasons I didn’t persevere with it the last time I found it was that I was rather daunted by redrawing the bits of the transfer which had worn away while it was hidden – or maybe not transferred properly in the first place.
In particular, the bottom row was a procession of Horse Guards, and horses are rather tricky to draw. I was interested to find that the past few years of working on my painting and drawing had made me much more calm in the face of that particular challenge. I don’t say my horses are particularly good, but they don’t look like elephants, and I count that a win!
I also decided that, since there was no way I could reconstruct the way the design was intended to be done, I would do something different, so all my additions are line stitched.
Apart from the border, which as you see I have blanket stitched to create the effect of one of those striped borders some banners have. Another alteration was to make the faces of the troupers a variety of different shades. A few years ago I might have picked one shade and used it for all of them, more concerned with pattern than verisimilitude, but our Armed Forces have never been restricted to white Britons, and now I am more concerned not to obliterate that service in the name of Design.
And it was finished before the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. If, as I half-suspect, it was a magazine design for the Coronation, I managed to finish it within the 70 years of her reign.
Found On The Blocking Board
I fished out the blocking board in order to start preparing to block the canvaswork “Constable” when it’s finished, only to meet a roadblock – the blocking board was already occupied!
Now, I recall – vaguely – finding this around the Diamond Jubilee, and thinking that Grandmama might have stitched it, either around the Coronation or around the Silver Jubilee, but then, now I’ve looked at the back, I can’t imagine that Grandmama would have been stitching as messily as this in 1952, given the quality of her stitching during the War, and given that I was very much alive and paying attention during the Silver Jubilee, I’m pretty sure I would have remembered her stitching it then.
And I don’t.
At the same I can I assure you it is too well stitched to have been stitched by me at the time, and besides that, I can assure you that I would absolutely remember attempting to stitch it!
I’ve decided that I am going to try to finish it this year. I’ve no idea who started it, but something begun Who-Knows-When by Who-Knows-Who is going to be finished this year by me.