A few months ago I taught a “Goldwork with Colour” course at our local adult education centre, and you may remember that the stitched models for that course were, shall we say, a little late in appearing. With hindsight this turned out to be a good thing, as it meant I could stitch along with the students, who could see the projects in progress. However, it also meant that the designs, apart from the small Precious Heart, languished half-finished after the course ended. Finishing things for the sake of finishing has never been high on my list of priorities, but these were goldwork, and it seemed a shame to let all those nice materials go to waste. So once I got the magazine deadline and my canvaswork out of the way, I settled down to completing a snowdrop, a forget-me-not and a peacock.

Not to overload you with goldwork (although there are worse things to be overloaded with) I’ll concentrate on the peacock today, and come back to the flowers in future FoFs – as I started this one I realised there was more to tell about these projects than I thought at first!

The peacock was the third and final project of the course, and from the start its tail was meant as an opportunity for the students to apply what they’d learnt about goldwork in their own way. They all did more or less the same thing on the body (appliquéd faux leather – choice of two colours – outlined in couched white opalescent 371 thread, silk shaded beak, chips for the head feathers, bead plus spangle – choice of gold or silver – for the eye) and the tail’s outline (more couched 371 thread, with a choice of colours for the three scalloped lines inside the tail), which got them to the stage shown above. They were then given a choice of metallic kid leathers, hollow purls, beads and more 371 thread and told to get on with it and have fun. And boy did they have fun .

I did work two of the tail feathers during the course, to demonstrate how to apply kid leather over padding, but I didn’t take pictures of that stage. Suffice it to say that’s what the tail still looked like a month or two later, when I finally got round to adding a few more: one with cutwork mixing a fine rough purl and a coarse wire check, with some metallic stem stitch around it to smooth out the edges, and one with chipping in two shades of rough purl using longer and slightly more wiggly chips than usual.

But what next? I’d already got kid appliqué, cutwork and chipping, and I didn’t fancy more couching. In a corner of my box of goldwork odds and ends I found some silver sadi check, an Indian goldwork thread much like bright check but bigger, and I combined that with “sprinkles” of rough purl. For the next feather, slightly against my better judgment, I decided on beads in a mixture of two greens and two blues.

Right away I realised it wasn’t a good choice. The beads were very irregular, so difficult to pack in densely, and the whole look of the thing was just not, well, goldworky enough. Time for a featherectomy.

Brief digression about that term – I came across the word years ago in a piece of writing by the journalist James Cameron, describing a visit paid by King George and Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother) to a South African ostrich farm during their royal tour in 1947. I’ve always loved the story so this is a good opportunity to share it. Cameron noted the very different personalities of the King and Queen, highlighted when the King was given a pair of clippers to cut a feather from one of the ostriches, which were bred for their plumage. “The King fumbled the operation and his tweezers nicked a quarter inch off the ostrich’s backside, at which the unlucky bird made a fearsome screeching hullabaloo from which we all retreated in terror. Enter the Queen, stage right, as usual in total smiling command. She took the clippers from her husband and there and then did an absolutely expert featherectomy. Snip!” She explained to Cameron, who happened to be standing near her, “We do a lot of gardening at home in the Palace. The King is good at the digging and the weeding. It is I who concentrate on the secateurs.”

Good to know that pruning skills come in handy if you are ever called on to collect some ostrich plumes. In my case, the offending peacock plume quickly succumbed to my small pointy scissors, ready to be transformed into something else. Because I had as yet no idea what to transform it into, I concentrated on the other remaining feather. I hadn’t consciously set out to create a certain colour pattern, but it now looked like a good idea to keep the three middle feathers in a turquoise/silver palette while doing the ones on the outside in purples and pinks. Not having any brilliant ideas I went for couching after all, combining lilac and pink 371 thread in what I hoped would be a two-tone spiral. Unfortunately the difference isn’t really visible in the finished article, but colourwise it still works so that was fine. For the remaining feather I dug out some dark blue-green twist, which I attached with invisible couching stitches (they are worked on the diagonal and disappear between the strands that make up the twist), leaving a gap in the middle to create a sort of yolk (they do look rather egg-shaped, don’t they?) of sadi chipping.

And that completed the peacock. Well, in as far as a project like this is ever finished; you could easily keep adding bits and pieces until the entire tail is filled, but I have other projects to move on to – I am setting up the slate frame for my Silk Shading module!