Mr Mabel had for some time been encouraging me to book more Certificate classes, because, he said, it would get me back into things. Possibly. But the thought of actually having to make decisions about my Canvaswork filled me with dread. Still, a cautious look at the last photograph I’d taken of the project showed me that there were one or two things I could do on there which had already been mapped out so I could just sit down and stitch them.

What could be less challenging or threatening? So I framed up a new doodle cloth, booked a class, went there (for the first time taking my Lowery stand, which was a very good idea) and got ready to Stitch A Bush. Tutor Helen M, however, had other ideas.

She agreed that I could stitch that particular bush at this stage of the project (you may remember that the order in which the various segments are stitched is very important, and if anything had been in front of this bush it would have been a no-no) but wanted me to do something else first. She wanted me to make decisions about the background, more specifically the very very dark blobs in between the flowers and prominent leaves.

Now one of the benefits of having different tutors is that you get several different perspectives on your project; but one of the drawbacks is that those perspectives sometimes differ confusingly. In my last class back in June (about which a little more later on) Angela had told me to concentrate on a few big leaves and make all the rest a sort of textured jumble, an approach also suggested by Helen J. Helen M seemed to favour more individual leaves, and more stitch size grading in the background. Still, to benefit by your tutor’s experience you have to take their ideas on board, so I drew a slice of design with lots of leaves and dark patches onto my doodle cloth and set about filling in a few big leaves.

But not quite yet… I really felt I needed my non-challenging bush first, to get myself re-acclimatised. So I put together a blend of two different shades of Heathway Milano crewel wool, one strand of vintage Pearsall’s silk (inherited from MIL), one strand of House of Embroidery flat silk, and one unidentified variegated green sort-of-perle-#8 and worked my first canvaswork stitch since last June.

This was followed by more – a lot more – Turkey rug stitches in a total of four blends until the entire bush had been filled, right up into the holes occupied by the adjacent shed’s roof because, Helen said, the assessors will push stitches aside to check that no bare canvas threads are showing.

Good luck to them I say .

When I first planned these bushes I envisaged them just in crewel wool, but Angela suggested adding some other textures. I sampled them with added Pearsall’s silk and anonymous thread and that looked quite effective in the loop stage, but unfortunately was pretty much lost when trimmed (see images below). I really wanted to trim this bush and see the result of using three different additional threads, but I vaguely remembered a tutor telling a student who’d used Turkey rug on her Jacobean project that it should be cut right at the end. I checked with Helen and she confirmed this; apparently it has to do with keeping it stable while stitching around it is happening. So I won’t know whether my blending has been successful until the piece is finished – not ideal as I won’t be able to change anything about it then, but there it is.

By the way, before we get to my background sampling, those with eagle eyes and long memories may have noticed that there are a few bits on my overview picture above that weren’t on the overview picture I posted last June. That is because there was one more class after that post and I never wrote about it. The main things that happened there were a bud, some stems and an orange tulip, plus a lot of sampling. For the big round bud in the foreground I’d decided on Norwich stitch, which when I sampled it was too square, and not blended enough. Instead of more sampling I made the changes directly on the proper canvas, and I’m happy with the result – like so much in canvaswork it’s not exactly photorealistic, but I think it captures the idea of it.

Several of the big stems were very dark with a hint of red, and I worked those in blended brick stitch; the stem for the big elongated bud on the left was just green, so I went for long satin stitches. So long, in fact, that I may take a very fine, very sharp needle horizontally through them with an invisible thread to secure them in the middle. And then there was a small and very bright orange tulip for which I had just the right bright orange flat silk! That one was done in satin stitch with the line between petals indicated by a break in the stitches.

Before that class I had also sampled some Rococo and modified Leviathan stitches in plain and blended pinks as possible small tulips, some leaf shapes in fly and Cretan stitch and some upright crosses in Caron Watercolours Blackwatch blended with very dark blue and very dark green stranded cotton for the dark background bits; I sampled this both in isolation and against one of the sampled buds, to see if it could accommodate the curves. As you can see, a tiny bit of canvas is showing, so that needed work.

Upright cross, in just that blend, was what I intended to sample at last Saturday’s class, but first there needed to be some leaves to surround the dark background bits. The first one I did in Madeira stranded silk, simply because colourwise that was the closest thing I had in my box of threads and because the leaves are quite smoothly textured, so silk seemed a good idea. I worked it in vertical and horizontal satin stitch, and bearing in mind Helen’s comment about not showing any canvas I tried tucking the horizontal stitches behind the vertical ones. Well, I tried it after not doing it for the first two stitches (blue arrow), and I decided not to redo those as they serve to illustrate the difference in look. I liked the look of both the silk and the tucking in so much that I will do this leaf the same way on the proper canvas.

Another leaf was done in diagonal satin stitch in double perle #8. I like the effect but the second green was too light; in spite of the 40 shades of green in my project boxes I couldn’t find a more suitable one, but fortunately I did find one in my stash back home for the real thing. The background of upright crosses worked well here, and hugged the leaf without any canvas showing. Result!

Oh, one thing I only noticed as I was stitching the sample was the light green little irregular triangle at the bottom (orange arrow; actually part of a larger leaf that got cut off in the photograph). As I had a lighter thread in my needle I doodled a tiny modified Amadeus stitch (blue arrow), and I liked it so much that it will definitely make it onto the proper canvas.

Another possible background texture which I’d sampled before, albeit in lighter colours, was staggered crosses.

Helen liked this one very much because the diagonal crosses in it are just a little bigger than the upright crosses, so my homework is to sample a background of staggered crosses in the bottom third, upright cross in the middle third, and something smaller in the top third; for that I will probably go with something called Lazy Kalem (orange arrow), one more stitch which reinforces my belief that in canvaswork any and every variation or combination gets its own name, as it’s basically tent stitch in mirrored vertical rows.

And that’s where I am now; the actual piece is not that much different, having gained one small bush, but it’s got me back into it so with a bit of luck there will be more progress in the not too distant future!

PS The plan for the next few months was to write just some quick, short FoFs. I’m a failure.