Having got the S-ing issue off my chest last time let’s move on to Padding (Bruce’s, not mine…) Second-highest score on both criteria, with deductions for the felt not having been stitched firmly enough, and there being a bump in the soft string. By the way, I was really pleased with the comment that although the width of the soft string padding would have been thought too wide generally, it worked for this design. It was one of the headaches about Bruce’s tail (which was just the perfect design area for padded cutwork) that where it attached to the rump it had to be quite wide to look natural (in as far as any goldwork kangaroo looks natural). I’m glad that was successful.

Do you remember how I struggled to keep that endless expanse of couched Jap on Bruce’s haunch and hind leg to lie flat against the sloping padding? And how the sample I did showed none of that buckling, even though my couching technique was exactly the same on both? And how I couldn’t work out why they behaved differently? Well, the assessors’ comment that the felt had “not been stitched firmly enough to support the gold” made me think – my sample padding was quite a bit smaller than the haunch (2 x 4cm against 4½ x 6cm) and that fact alone would have made it firmer, as the felt had less ground to cover between the attaching stitches. I suppose it’s like holding a very short string taut by holding the two ends, and trying to do the same with a much longer string – however tightly you pull the ends of that longer string, it is more likely to sag than the short one. In the email to Anne Butcher, the Head of Teaching, I’ve asked whether the assessors would be willing to tell me how I can remedy this lack of firmness in larger areas of padding, so I can avoid the distortions in future projects (such as, hopefully some time in the not too distant future, my Advanced Goldwork).

I realise that the above theory doesn’t account for the buckling on the thin part of the leg, but that may have been because the gradient there was very steep; I’ll ask about that as well. As for the bump in the soft string padding, going back over the progress pictures I took I think they must refer to the one shown below, which does indeed show up even when covered in cutwork. Still, on the whole they were pleased with how the padding supported the gold, which is very satisfying!

Next up is Couching, Plunging and Pearl Purl.

Full marks for my bricking, and the way I had invisibly joined the pearl purl – as I did extra sampling for the latter, I’m pleased that came out so well. I can in fact see the join if I look closely, but that may be because I know where it is, so I won’t point it out to them .

The front leg, or arm as they call it, was never my favourite bit. It was changed to couching-straight-onto-the-fabric fairly last minute, when Angela realised that there was no such couching in the design and it was required by the brief. The herringboned plunging (green arrow) is not my best, and the plunging along the top line has, as they very rightly point out, damaged the fabric in places (purple arrows). The gold foil has also come a little loose near the plunging on a few threads (red arrow for one example). Not my best work. Still, I was a bit surprised about the comment that the turns in the arm needed a further stitch, as the only turns are in the paw/hand, and I can’t quite see how I could have put in any more stitches there. Also mysterious: “the turns on the leg show progression.” Unfortunately I worked the leg before the arm…

There were two comments about the pearl purl: that some of the couching stitches were visible, and that there were “many kinks”. Absolutely no disagreement with the first one – there are some visible couching stitches. Fortunately not so visible that they are noticeable when Bruce is viewed from a normal distance, but at “assessment distance”, yes. But the kinks, well, I wondered what exactly they meant by that. There are several (bright pink arrows), for example, in Haasje and in Bruce’s front leg, but they are there because the design line changes direction in a way that can’t be couched in a smooth curve. There is one such kink in the hind foot where the gap between the coils of the pearl purl is larger than it should be (green arrow), which may be what they mean. But if it is I honestly cannot see “many” of them. Another question I asked in my email, therefore, was how the assessors define a kink. They can’t have thought them extremely important though, as they deducted the minimum number of points (two, in a double-weighted section) covering both the visible stitches and the kinks.

On to the final section about the embroidery, which is Chipping and Cutwork. Full marks for uniform chips and uncracked cutwork – I had taken a lot of care over the latter especially, re-cutting and attaching quite a few of the tail chips, so it was encouraging to see that that paid off.

There were two areas of chipping in the piece, the sun and the centre of Bruce’s haunch. The two things you mustn’t do in chipping is overlap the chips, and have felt showing. But for me at least (perhaps that gets better with more experience) it sometimes seems that it simply has to be one or the other, especially when trying to fill in the last bit of an area. I did try to cut some of the chips a little smaller to fit into small gaps, but it didn’t always work. The pictures below (the last chip was just about to be placed in the sun) show a few of the gaps that I either couldn’t fill or didn’t actually notice; among the sparkle in the pictures it is quite difficult to spot overlaps, but looking close up at the piece in real life, especially at the sun, there are definitely a few of those which I missed when working on it. A learning moment, which is what it is all about!

Besides there being the required span of cutwork and not many cracks, the cutwork tail had two other positives: the chips hugged the padding closely (awww – sweet) and the ends touched the fabric on both sides. Again, something I had really worked on, by endlessly re-cutting chips so they would be exactly the right length. I’m hoping to train myself to get a better eye for it so I get the length right first time! The two criticisms refer to challenges that are rather related to each other: the angle of the chips (which ought to remain at about 45 degrees throughout, and therefore has to change with the curve of the tail) was slightly lost, and there were gaps where the felt was visible. In trying to minimise the gaps, I flattened out the angle at the top of the tail, and in trying to maintain the angle, I introduced some very visible gaps in the tip of the tail. I mentioned the latter in my Project Evaluation Notes after discussing it with Angela, who said that because the outline was very nice and even it was probably better not to unpick some chips and try to fill in the gaps; knowing the time and effort it took to get it to look that even (hugging the padding and touching the fabric, as the assessment calls it) I gladly took her advice. And compared with the two bits of cutwork I did before this module (a one-on-one RSN class in 2017 and the goldwork racehorse in 2019) I can definitely see improvement, so I’m happy with that. More practice and one day I’m sure I’ll get to the point where I can keep the angle and minimise gaps.

The last section, which is not really about the embroidery itself, is Mounting. You may remember I lost a fair few marks on that in the Jacobean module, so I was pleased to see that I had improved: four points lost instead of six.

Most marks were deducted for failing to stroke the fabric around the edges back in place to hide the pin holes, and that was fair enough; partly because of the looser, rougher weave of the silk, some of the pins had made holes that I simply could not get rid of, and in one or two places they had actually severed the thinner dark fabric threads. I described my unsuccessful attempts in my Project Evaluation Notes.

That, by the way, brings me to an interesting distinction. I’m always telling students (and other fellow stitchers) not to point out any mistakes in a piece to people who are admiring it. For one thing, they are often things that they wouldn’t otherwise have noticed. Who but the stitcher knows that a particular stitch should have been very dark brown instead of very dark blue, for example? But when handing in a piece for assessment, it’s different. It actually works in your favour if you can say, “that bit is wrong, and I know it is wrong; this is what I did to try and make it better, some of which helped and some of which didn’t work”. It feels oddly counter-intuitive, pointing out to those who will be judging you exactly where they can deduce points , but in the end I think it is the best way, as it shows that you have a realistic view of your own achievements.

And having had a realistic look at all that is wrong with Bruce, I will now have another good long look at him and feel proud!