Today is Easter Monday (or second Easter Day, as it is known in my native Dutch), and on Easter Monday 13 years ago Mabel Figworthy’s Fancies was born. Today is also April 1st, which happens to be Mabel’s own birthday (yes, really). So a very good day on which to get back to my unsuccessful new year’s resolutions and break this eleven-week-long spell of not writing any FoFs!

Although stitching has been a bit intermittent due to health and other issues, there has been some, and there has even been a finish – yes, Llandrindod has been completed, a mere five years and eleven months after it was first conceived. You may remember that last time I wrote I was weighing up the relative merits of outlining the gems in opalescent white, or in metallics matching the colour of the gems. Well, in the end I decided on both: the white stood out too much against the darker facets, but the coloured metallics (which are, in fact, Petite Treasure Braid, not blending filament as I thought) were rather too stark next to some of the lighter facets. So why not combine the two? Tested on the amethyst this turned out to be a proper Goldilocks solution – just right. So out came half of the coloured metallics on the other three, and in went the opalescent white.

Finally I wanted to outline the gold parts in, well, gold. Elizabethan twist (a fine 2-ply) for the dark gold parts, a very fine passing for the light gold parts, with some decoration yet to be decided on the four light arcs. But when I’d finished couching the Elizabethan twist I found that I actually rather liked the effect of not having the lighter parts outlined – it made them recede so that the overall effect was more 3D. And any decoration I thought of (scrolls, spangles) just looked fussy. So after a few fill-in stitches where the silk didn’t quite meet the gold I declared Llandrindod finished; finally! I had hoped to mount it so that when we go to Wales for our annual rally later this month I could take it to the church that inspired it and show it to the vicar, but I haven’t got round to it. Oh well, there’s always next year!

My next project, although it also included bling, couldn’t be more different. Inspired by a penguin brooch in a goldwork book I recently acquired, I decided to make a brooch of my own, but I didn’t just want to follow the penguin project. However, I did want it to be silver on black. What other animals could I think of that were black and white, and that could be reduced to a fairly stylised version while still being recognisable? Having rejected cows, zebras and magpies, I went for a badger, or more accurately, a badger’s face. The first step was to study some photographs of badgers, and to try and capture its essence in as few lines as possible. Then to scribble down ideas for the various silver threads and wires to use. The fabric I had already decided on: the slightly fuzzy side of black faux suede. This meant the white parts would be covered in various types of silver, while the black parts would remain unstitched. But what about the eyes, which were black on black? For that I picked black Kreinik #5 Jap, to be couched in a spiral – my theory being that the shininess of the black Jap would give enough contrast against the matt suede to stand out.

I’d printed the badger outline in several sizes, some very big so I could sketch stitches in them, some smaller to use as templates. The penguin brooch was 5cm tall and that did seem to be about as big as you’d like a brooch to be, but I wasn’t sure if that would give enough room for the various types of silverwork I wanted to include. However, placing the wires and threads on the smallest template showed that it was feasible at 5cm, so I went ahead and transferred that version to the suede, using prick & pounce and a silver gel pen.

The first thing to be stitched was the lighter top of the nose, which would be done in kid leather. But the pewter leather I got was not quite dark enough. Fortunately I found some soft faux leather in just the right shade, and pretty much the exact shade of DMC to stitch it down with! Unfortunately, stitching on fuzzy black turns out to be very difficult to photograph, so my close-up of the finished nose highlight is too blurred to be usable. Never mind, you’ll see it in later overview pictures.

The next thing was all the outlines (everything except the nose), for which I picked Very Fine pearl purl (PP), the thinnest available. Having worked out a stitch order and, in the interest of reproducability, having measured all the bits of PP I cut, I got to work. This was a very satisfying part of the process because it stitches up relatively quickly, but my goodness it is hard on the eyes! Not something to try and finish in one go.

You may have noticed in the picture above that one eye has been stitched as well, couching black Kreinik Jap as intended. It’s fairly visible in the photograph but not nearly so much in real life, so I left the other eye to mull that one over for a bit. Mr Figworthy suggested an oval sequin, but if I was going to use anything like that in a metal thread embroidery piece I’d always use spangles, and they don’t come in oval shapes. Also, a badger’s eyes aren’t silver. But they are, of course, shiny – so what if I used a spangle and covered most of it in black couching thread, with just a bit of the silver shining through, and with perhaps a black outline to give shape to the eye? My first attempt covered the spangle too much, so that it became practically camouflaged. A second version, using eight couching stitches, worked better. Kreinik for the outline seemed a better idea than just black thread, and I did indeed like the effect. At some point I will unpick the first eye and re-do it in the same way.

First, however, I wanted to get started with the middle white stripe, in silver no. 7 passing couched in pairs. My initial sketch divided this into the stripe down to the nose, and the narrow bit underneath the nose with the roughly triangular bits beside it. But as there was a bit more room than I’d thought, I took the pair of passing threads all the way round the face; there is no room for another pair underneath the nose, so I will work a single one there that will extend into the adjacent triangles.

And that’s where I’ve got to. I should do some homework for my next Certificate class (a couple have been cancelled so I really can’t turn up after all that time with only half a leaf and a small tulip done) but I am rather taken with this badger and am reluctant to put him to one side. Also, he won’t be assessed so if anything doesn’t work it doesn’t matter… So I may take the cowardly option and stick with this blingy bit of black & white. At least I’m stitching, and FoFfing, which must be a good thing!