Well, that break was a lot longer than I’d intended. The two
weeks of the NEOS exhibition were exhausting, as I was there all day every day
demonstrating the embroidery machine. Then on the last day of the show the
thread cutting mechanism on the machine packed up. This device isn’t strictly
necessary for stitching, and I’ve done a few things just cutting the thread by
hand, but believe me, when you get used to the automatic cutter you really miss
it when it’s not there. So the machine will have to go back to David Drummond for
mechanical attention yet again.
As if that weren’t enough my old Nikon camera seems to have
breathed its last, so I was stuck with a new camera to record the show. I did
take a lot of shots but now I’m having problems downloading the pictures. So until I figure out how to get at the pictures of the show
I’ll just post some scans of designs that I did for the show, and which were
sold, which means that these pictures are really all I have left of them.
First is one that I quite like, which is based on one of my
drawings of a pheasant that wandered into our garden when we lived down in
Perthshire. It’s digitised in two pieces – the tail is stitched first and the
fabric is then re-hooped and the body added. The appliqueed body is made with
hand-printed fabric, and the whole thing is stitched on painted and printed
felt, that was dampened before the paint was applied.
I’m glad I remembered to take its picture before it was sold,
because now I should be able to re-create it reasonably accurately
The Perthshire Pheasant