Embracing the Imperfect...

After three years of work and almost a quarter of a million stitches I've finally finished my needlepoint project. It's inspired by something I once saw in the V&A which sadly is no longer on display. I feel I've learnt an awful lot whilst I did this, about matching and contrasting colours as well as holding large pieces clean and secure whilst working on them over a long period of time. And I think it's been quite inspirational to my little niece who has loved holding and arranging the bobbins of cotton thread.

I started in the middle which in a way is a shame - I did all my learning about colour there and so the biggest mistakes are there. I learnt quickly not to unpick - the weave is just too small - so all the bits I got wrong are there in all their glory. And I think it was a mistake to use tent stitch, which brings me onto my next paragraph.

The finished work is well out of 'true', so I've blocked it using the instructions in 'Crewel Embroidery' by Jane Rainbow. (There are alternative instructions at http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~rtusler/stitching/blocking.html). It took two of us a fair bit of effort to pull the thing as square as I've shown it and nail it in place and it's still far from perfect. And I've discovered that the ostensibly 'fast' cottons (to 90 degrees) will bleed slightly at room temperature - luckily only into the ground. I'm not keen to do this again! So I've decided to embrace the imperfect and stop fretting. I have a nice piece of deep red silk that I'm going to use to mount it and the sides will just have to be slightly off true. I intend to use my newfound 'log cabin' skills to do this....