Right, where were we on Bruce – I’d almost got the couching back to where it was before my class, and I’d filled in a bit of the sun. Although undoing and redoing is part of the learning process and very useful, it nevertheless feels a bit deflating, and it took me a while to work up the motivation to finish those last re-couching stitches and get on with my homework. When I finally did, I succeeded in making things worse… How? Well, it happened while I was continuing with the Jap couching after I’d re-couched the buckling bits.

I finally realised why, when Helen tested my couching stitches, they were so slack. It surprised me at the time, because I’m quite finicky about my couching and I didn’t think my tension had been that loose – but as I was couching the Jap on ever thicker layers of padding, I noticed that whenever I pulled the couching stitches on the present round, this would compact the felt (not much, but just noticeably). Because of that, the stitches on the previous round then loosened – in other words, the couching stitches on previous rounds get looser precisely because I put a sufficient amount of tension on the present round. Was there a way of restoring the tightness of those stitches? Well, you could pull them from the back and secure them, which is what I tried to do.

But it’s not easy to see from the back which stitch tightens what when the couching is so dense, so some things got pulled more than I intended while others didn’t get pulled at all, meaning the surface was now if anything less smooth! Eventually I decided to tighten the worst of them from the front, by “looping” a small stitch around the base of the couching stitches, until it looked more or less acceptable again. I continued with the couching and finally came to the point where I needed to finish off the Jap to leave enough room for the chipping-in-a-pearl-purl-border. I briefly considered two patterns of staggered plunging, but the A pattern was a clear favourite both with me and others I asked, so I didn’t bother sampling them and went straight (or rather, staggered) ahead.

There is still some buckling on that haunch and on the thin part of the leg, but I’m afraid I will just have to live with that. I have no wish to try another experiment only to see it get worse! You have to know when to stop, and I’d reached that point. No more tweaking. Enough is enough. Instead I’m trying to concentrate on the things I’m pleased with, such as the smooth finish on the Jap’s staggered plunging, the tightness of my couched turns, and the chipping in the sun which is nice and dense and does all the things the brief requires, like covering all the felt, achieving a random effect, and not having any chips stand up perpendicularly.

Next was the pearl purl (PP) border. The brief asks for a closed outline with an invisible join. As I had never tried this before, it seemed a good idea to sample it first. Having decided to use size 1 (which is the slightly thicker one used for the kangaroo leg outlines, with the thinner Super PP reserved for Haasje) I had a go on my sample cloth. When coming to the finish, I cut the PP just a little bit too short, so the join is visible, but for a first go I was not unhappy with it. On to the real thing, remembering to cut the end of the PP just a tiny bit longer than the gap I was trying to fill, and voilà, one nearly invisible join. Hurray!

On to the front leg. First, remove the felt for a pristine work surface. Realise that removing felt completely is extremely tricky. Tweezer off most of the fluff caught in the couched twist border. Hope that the couching will cover up any remaining bits.

Here two tutor interventions came together. The first was Angela’s suggestion that I should plunge the couching on the front leg in a staggered seam rather than using the tight turns I’d demonstrated on my sample. The second was Helen’s realisation that there was no area of couching-straight-onto-the-fabric (i.e. with no felt underneath) in the design, which was required by the brief. The reason for this requirement is to see how well you cover the fabric without the safety net of golden yellow felt beneath, something which may actually be easier with plunging than with turning, much though I prefer to avoid plunging whenever I can. Actually it’s not the plunging so much, it’s the oversewing on the back which needs a curved needle and can get terribly crowded, but it seemed that plunge and oversew I must. However, first there was the thin part of the leg with the foot, which I did decide to fill with a turn, and I was really pleased with the way the central pair of Jap fitted in snugly and how I managed to brick the stitches relative to both sides. The turn and plunging on the foot was also successful in that very little fabric shines through.

Then it was spaghetti time! Filling the top of the leg was quite tricky, especially towards the middle where the lines became shorter and shorter until each pair was held down with only a single couching stitch. Herringboning the plunging was awkward, particularly at the bottom end where all the unplunged tails obscured the ones that needed plunging first.

But I managed, and didn’t pull out any of the short lengths when plunging (yes, this does happen). At this point some of the Jap did not lie completely flat towards the plunged ends, because some final couching stitches were needed which I couldn’t put in while the ends were unplunged and unsecured.

So that meant doing the securing first. It may seem that the spaghetti had disappeared, but alas, it had merely moved. To the back. Trying to fit in all the tails was an interesting puzzle; with about three-quarters done I began to have serious doubts about cramming in the remaining quarter!

And here is the front leg all done, with the final couching stitches added in. Am I happy with the result? Looking with a critical eye and with the brief in mind, I can see some areas where I will lose points. The top line is not as even as I would have liked, even though I did unplunge and restitch several of them; but more replunging would just have damaged both the threads and the fabric, so this is how it will be. Then a few of the Jap threads are showing their yellow core at the plunge point; you can to some extent counteract this by twisting the thread from behind before oversewing, but in a number of cases this simply didn’t work. On the other hand, there is little fabric showing and I think my couching is quite neat overall. The little gap at the top where the left and right side meet in the middle is too small for even a single thread of Jap to comfortably fit in, so I will suggest to Angela that I leave that as it is.

My next class is this Saturday and I’m hoping to do a bit more before then – I need to draw a diagram to scale of the cutwork on the tail, and I’d like to get the chipping on the haunch done. But for now here is a picture of Bruce as he is at the moment: