Week's progress

Thankyou to everyone who commented on my fabric. I have put it back in the stash - there is enough fabric for a light jacket (what other sort of jacket do you need in the subtropics?)and after it is made I can consider what to do with the leftovers.

This week once again I cheat a little by trawling my cupboards and coming up with this ancient piece of fabric marbling. The actual colours are closer to TIF shades than show up on the scan. It seems that I urgently need some help with my scanning and photography - especially when one realises that my photos aren't nearly as close in colour as the scans.

However, for what it is worth, I feel this fits quite nicely with Sharon's colours for March TIF Challenge.

On the subject of colours while I quite agree with some of the chosen DMC numbers that I have seen on blogs I have spent considerable time with the DMC thread chart and have decided that the deepest grape (the far right hand side shade) is just not available in DMC. However, as I mentioned in the last post, I do have a cone of 2/20 that I can use. Also since my first piece is using pulled thread I have chosen to use Guttermans machine thread and these are 893, 925, 718 and 575 - the latter is a deep grape shade.

As I have done so little of the pulled thread I have not bothered to scan it yet. Hopefully by next week there will be enough to show and tell. I love pulled thread work but since this is on 32 count linen I can only work in good daylight and with my magnifier. Also my eyes need a break every half hour so the progression is slow.

For some days I spent ages messing around in my journal. The aim was to produce a design that could be used in a variety of techniques. I would also like to use the design for blackwork . The interesting part of these 'sample' pieces is that I have always considered both pulled thread and blackwork to be work in monochrome and here I am attempting to add colour to the mix. Maybe I will also manage to produce a third example in crewel embroidery.