The first skirt turned out nice so I started on another one. This one will be bolder, in bright red and with embroidery on the front. Same stretchy wool fabric as the first one.

What to embroider, though? That was the difficult question.

Definitely nothing corny like hearts or butterflies or flowers. Vines or leaves, like ivy maybe? No, I have a green skirt that I also want to pimp up, and leaves and vines would look better in green than in red.

An animal of some kind, like the lizard towel I made for my brother? There are lots of cool, clever animals – dragons and cats and ravens and octopuses and elephants. The problem with putting an animal in such a prominent position, though, is that it becomes a statement. (Does in my head, at least.) Cats, for example, are nice – but I don’t care so much about them that I would want my only bold skirt to be a cat skirt. And they’re all a bit cliché as well, somehow, to be personal. Especially since I cannot draw well enough to draw them from scratch. I’d have to google for a picture to start from, and then it would be like wearing clip art on my skirt.

Anything even vaguely symbolic has the same problem. All of it has been appropriated by fashion designers, so it wouldn’t feel mine. I love Celtic knotwork designs, for example, and doodled some of my own many years ago. But now everybody and their dog has a knotwork tattoo.

Something completely abstract, then? Yes.

Circles. Circles are common in both traditional Estonian and Swedish embroidery, which feels fitting. Less common than flowers, but common enough that I’ll be able to find some inspiration. Circles it’ll be.

This decision was followed by lots of experimenting with cardboard circles. I like tangible design tools, digital sketching is not for me.

Like this? Fewer? Larger? More filled or more empty?