Starfishes, more or less as I had envisaged them.

The second session of the embroidery workshop will be tomorrow and will deal with finishing and making something of your embroidery. I’ve been working on mine so that I can be done with the actual embroidering by then.

Since this was supposed to be a learning opportunity, I tried to use not just familiar stitches (running stitch, whip stitch and chain stitch) but also some that I rarely use (stem stitch) and some that I have seen but never tried myself (couching and French knots).

Couching was as easy as it looked. That’s what I used for the thin white starfish with small red stitches at the top left. French knots are the small wart-like things on the green starfish. Not difficult per se, but I need more practice to get them really even and tight.

When I had finished the starfishes, I thought the design as a whole was still lacking something. I had four separate starfishes rather than one coherent design. I thought of adding seaweeds, but decided on small seed pearls. They’re like water bubbles sparkling in the sun.

The stem stitch framing around the edges of the starfishes came out really nice, crisp and distinct. This is my new favourite technique and I don’t think I will be using blanket stitch for appliques much from now on.

One of my embroidery books encouraged readers to sign their embroideries. It’s a tradition in older works to put the maker’s initials and the year somewhere. I saw this advice when I had already filled the background with pearls and had no suitable place for signing. But the piece of cloth that will become the back of the bag/pouch thing (which I intend to make of this) is all empty, so I decided to sign the back instead.

It’s funny to imagine someone finding this many decades from now. Maybe I’ll give it away and the recipient tires of it and gives it to charity. Maybe I die and someone inherits it and then gifts it to someone else. And then at some point someone discovers it and starts digging into its history and writes a school project about it. Or a blog post, or whatever takes the place of blog posts a hundred years from now. “The materials are of Swedish manufacture and the design is clearly inspired by Swedish traditions, but the embroidery is signed with an Estonian name, very intriguing!”