Stage 6 Sampler - half done

Doing the textures sampler using my favourite marbling sample and the colours of yarn I picked in the same proportions. I found I was not going to have nearly enough of the yarns so I found some more in the same colours - including some more yarn I made by making strips of fabric. I found myself getting excited about using non-embroidery yarns. I thought about doing it on hessian, as the instructions suggested a strong fabric, but after looking some more at the marbling sample I saw that would not at all be in keeping with the texture of the thing. Between the stitches cannot be rough like that, or dark coloured, or it will lose its essential light floatiness.

Initially I was sewing more or less along the lines and using the colours of the picture I was working from. And trying to fill in some of the background of the parts I thought I wanted to do more textured stuff. I got a little worried that i was using more lines than textures. I started doing some patches in parallel chain stitches, and the curve of the shape meant that they were of diminishing size. Just doing this helped me feel more free to experiment with the different ways of doing it.

For me this work seems to be a tension between fear of doing something that looks rubbish versus trying out new and interesting things. The kind of yarn I use does influence what the texture stitches looks like, but less so than I had thought, and doing texture stitches in different kind of yarns has less influence on the final product than which stitch I choose to do. I thought the couched silk strips would look odd but although they are shaggy, I like that, and it doesn't look as different as I expected.



This is as far as I've got with this before leaving on holiday