Some time ago I started a project pouch, on which I was going to embroider “Mabel” in line-sampler letters. These letters to be outlined in stem stitch using Anchor Multicolor perle #5, with each letter being a different colour combination. Nice and bright, as random and freehand as I am ever likely to achieve, in fact the perfect pick-up-and-stitch project. If it weren’t for one or two things.

First, because of the way the pouch is constructed all stitching has to be done using the sewing method, and I am by nature a stabbing girl (only with an embroidery needle, and only on fabric, I hasten to add!) – and all fastening on and off has to be done from the front, and be kept invisible. This makes it rather less relaxing than I intended. In theory the padded lining can be flipped up so you can get at the back of the fabric, but unfortunately some of my sewing motions managed to pick up a bit of the lining, which is now attached to the outer fabric and therefore unflippable.

Secondly, I do not like the look of the stem stitch outline. I thought that would be my favourite part, because normally I really like chunky stem stitch in perle #5, and I love the Anchor Multicolors. But not only was it difficult to stitch, I could not manage to get the rope texture nice and tight, especially around corners. Oh, I know, smaller stitches help. But the fabric is relatively thin, and even with fairly long stitches it get a bit pulled and distorted; too many chunky stitches close together would be a nightmare to stitch, and look even worse.

This will need a bit of thinking. I will probably unpick the outline, and restitch it in Multicolor stranded cotton; it won’t stand out quite so much, but should be easier to do, and end up less floppy-looking around the corners. For the moment, I’m going to put this one aside; it was meant as an easy in-between project, but as it will now take rather more thought and work it no longer qualifies as such. I’ll definitely finish it – for one thing I don’t want to waste that pouch – but not now.

OK, so sometimes a project goes wrong, and that makes it less attractive. But sometimes a project can go wrong, yet be tremendous fun! I needed something easy to stitch while we were down at my mother-in-law’s, doing some sorting and clearing in the house she’s just moved out of. There wouldn’t be that much stitching time, so it had to be something simple, preferably with small parts within the design that could be finished quickly. Something like one of Kelly Fletcher’s monograms, in fact, particularly the one with the leafy border. And I happened to have a ready-to-embroider napkin bought as an experiment at the same time as the project pouch! Perfect.

Or it would have been, if I’d had time to transfer the design before we went. Unfortunately I didn’t, so one evening when there was just about enough light left I tried to do the transfer against a west-facing window. My usual pencil had somehow disappeared from my bag, so I tried one of the many pencils in the house. It was a very hard pencil, and after painstakingly tracing most of the design I thought to check, only to find that it had left no imprint whatsoever. The other pencils I found were either equally hard, or far too blunt, and there wasn’t a sharpener around. A blue pencil seemed the most likely to produce a usable line, so I gave that a try. It did leave a ghostly outline, but to be usable it had to be more visible; I decided that by now I might as well use a pen and be done with it. Tracing over the faint blue lines I realised that when holding a fairly large napkin up against a window for tracing, it is almost impossible to keep it square. It sags. It drags. And so the circular border was anything but circular. To make matters worse, I then put the initial in at the wrong angle – it should have pointed towards the corner. It doesn’t. And let’s not even mention the leaves, which are meant to be uniform in size and spacing. Quite.

But you know what? I’m enjoying stitching this enormously. It will produce a perfectly usable and reasonably decorative napkin, I’m getting lots of practice doing fishbone stitch, and if anything doesn’t go quite as planned it doesn’t matter as it can’t possibly get any worse than it already is . The perfect pick-up-and-stitch project! Unlike the pouch…