Recently I’ve been stitching several little Quatrefoils as trial pieces, such as this one in Splendor silk on dark red dupion (where I transferred the outline using the Quaker Tapestry method).

I did another one, you may remember, to try out Empress Mills’ Mountmellick fabric, and although generally I am quite happy to keep experiments like these in a folder for future reference, occasionally the urge to Do Something With Them does grab me. In this case it did so because I was getting some coasters to send out, and putting aside one which had a few small blemishes and which therefore I can’t sell. Hmmm, I thought – could you put the Quatrefoil, with its dense stitching and couched goldwork thread, into a coaster?

Well, the answer turns out to be “yes you can, but it’s probably better not to” . What makes this little flower work well in a card is the padding behind it, which hides the lumps and bumps at the back of the work and makes the embroidery stand proud. The top of the coaster, on the other hand, pushes the stitching down and makes it very difficult to even out the fabric around it, although in the end I managed a just-about-acceptable look with the judicious addition of a little light wadding.

Back to stitching. Several of my projects, like the Ottoman Tulip, Llandrindod and Hengest, have now been going (very slowly) for quite some time, but one new project had a bit of a built-in deadline: I bought a light blue bodysuit for our grandson Teddy to be embellished with, yes, a teddy, and it obviously had to be finished while it still fits him, which considering the rate he is growing at would not be very long!

I got the teddy design from one of the small Anchor stitch guides (the same series that Percy the Parrot came from), but of course I couldn’t possibly stitch it as it came… a T-shirt was added to the denim dungarees and around the bear I charted the words “Oma’s favourite Teddy” (Oma being the Dutch word for Granny). The threads had to be easily washable so I went for coton à broder.

I’ve not done an awful lot of stitching on clothing or other made-up items so it wasn’t until I got the romper suit home that I realised something a bit shorter and/or more open at the bottom would have been rather easier to work on – but as it turned out the real challenge was to keep the stitch tension even while working in hand on stretchy fabric! I don’t think I’ve produced anything quite this wonky and puckered for several decades, but as it was definitely out of my comfort zone I’m pretty pleased with it nonetheless .

One puzzling thing about this project was the fact that lines which I stitched absolutely parallel somehow managed to be definitely not parallel when finished. Stem stitch at the front produces backstitch at the back, and the lilac and yellow backstitch lines forming the T-shirt’s neckline look just fine on the inside of the bodysuit (I’m afraid I forgot to take a picture of this before I wrapped it up). But the two stem stitch lines showing at the front of the suit get closer to each other from left to right – how does that happen? Oh well, I’m sure Teddy won’t mind; he’ll only see it upside down when looking down his chest and that distorts the perspective anyway!

The final experiment is in production as you read this, and by someone else, so I can’t show it yet. But I’m very excited about getting samples printed for workshop & kit fabrics! At the moment any transfers are done by me by hand, aided by my trusty light box and some very fine technical drawing pens. I’ve looked into screen printing but I was rather put off that by a number of kits I bought (from different sources) which had such thick lines that I had to add stitches to make sure everything was covered; if anyone knows of screen printers who will produce nice thin lines I’d be delighted to know! Anyway, I’m waiting for the arrival of one sample of plain cotton, one of calico and one of duchess satin, each with a different design; they should be here next week. Watch this space…