Have you ever heard of the Echternach procession? Its participants used to progress by taking two steps backward for every three steps forward. The fifth class of my RSN Certificate goldwork module (AKA Bruce) felt more like two steps backward for about one and a half steps forward – I ended up not even back where I started, albeit with a little additional chipping to keep my spirits up.

We started the class looking at Bruce’s ears. The original stitch plan has smooth chipping there, but the areas are quite small and I wondered whether longer, parallel chips might not look neater. I bounced this idea off the tutor (Helen McCook, with whom I did the racehorse workshop two summers ago) and she agreed that that would be a better idea, and approved the directions I had chosen for the longer chips. So stripy ears instead of spotted ones for Bruce, although not quite yet – first there’s all the couching to finish.

When I say “finish”, what actually happened was more of a “tidy up”. Having had a look at the foot, Helen suggested a few extra couching stitches closer to some of my plunging, which I put in. Two of them are marked with arrows in the picture, and I cannot for the life of me remember where the third one was, even after comparison with earlier photographs. But they’re there now, hopefully giving extra security to the foot.

Then we got to the painful bit. Not quite the most painful bit – that came later, at home, and will be fully revealed in a later FoF. But quite painful enough. Helen turned out not to be bothered about the thin part of the leg (which was my worry), but picked up on the underside of the haunch. She said it wasn’t as smooth as the rest (which was true) and that it therefore drew the eye because the rest was so even and smooth. We looked at the sloping sample, then she tested my couching stitches on the actual piece and said the tension wasn’t tight enough. After discussing a few more technical points she suggested that I take out the couching stitches along the bottom curve of the haunch and re-couch. Not a nice thing to hear, but as a very wise stitching friend said, “That is what tutors do. If you can accomplish your task without them, then they don’t have anything to do.” Very true.

Incidentally, although I would not wish difficulties on anyone, it was rather reassuring to find that the Diploma (that is, Advanced) goldwork student next to me was wrestling with the same problem: getting pairs of gold threads to lie flat when couching them onto a sloping surface. At least it wasn’t just me!

Anyway, I unpicked the couching from the outermost pair to the first of the mixed pairs, plus a tiny bit on the last two pairs. This was rather more awkward than it sounds – because the couching is so dense, because I couldn’t always tell where I’d started a new couching thread and because towards the leg there are several plunged and oversewn ends which lock everything into place, it wasn’t a simple matter of snipping the thread and then pulling out all the stitches in that row one after the other; they snagged, they dragged, they misbehaved. Still, during the class I managed to restitch from the outer edge up to the mixed couching, and Helen said it looked much better. When I showed it to my husband later that day, he agreed. I’m still not fully convinced. It looks better, yes, but does it look that much better? Still, if it looks better to the tutor’s eye (and therefore hopefully to the assessors’ eyes) then I suppose that’s the important bit!

There was another snag. Helen picked up on the fact that there was no couching-straight-onto-the-fabric anywhere in my design, even though that is required in the brief. How I managed to miss that I don’t know. How three tutors, all with access to my stitch plan and looking at the actual project, managed to miss it is anybody’s guess. But there it was. After a good long look at the design, and having come to the conclusion that I couldn’t really add another couched area without throwing the design completely off balance, I suggested that I could take out the felt on the front leg. Not an area I would have chosen for “naked” couching if I could help it, as it is small and the shape is quite complex. On the other hand, it’s only one layer, it wasn’t put in there to add height but merely to do what yellow felt does in goldwork, namely make it look better and disguise any gaps (which is of course exactly why the brief specifies an area of couching without this safety net), and most importantly, it hasn’t been couched on yet. So out it will come, after I’m done with the hind leg.

On the plus side, Helen really liked my couched twist and pearl purl outlines, saying (after some rather disconcerting pushing and pulling) that it felt nice and solid, and also approved the bit of chipping I did on the sun. It looks like Bruce is not a completely lost cause after all .