I hope I didn't give the impression

in yesterday's post that I was setting myself up as some sort of design expert - quite the opposite! It is because I am not very good at design that I committed myself publicly to exploring ideas in the blog - I hope that will make me do it!

So here is the first effort. It started with a scan of my tracing of the pebble outlines - with added paw prints, after Quality Control inspected it. I was going to weave it through some pink card, but decided it was a bit bland. After I coloured some of the pebbles in with a variety of grey pencils - [some water soluble, some not] - I decided I liked it too much to cut it up.That is the image top right [although it isn't as pink as it looks in the scan].

As usual, I scanned it as a grey scale image [top left], a black and white image [bottom left] and a negative [bottom right].

My first reaction was that it could be shadow work - the sort where you put scraps of coloured fabric behind the sheer, although the herringbone stitch one might work as well. The negative version made me wonder - 'What if I tried shadow work with a dark background and sheer, and light fabric scraps?' I've never seen any like that, but it might work. Alternatively I could try a light sheer, like net.


The black and white scan could be black work - I must try and find some time to experiment!

And speaking of pebbles - enjoy! Hannah Frew Patterson was one of the embroiderers we were encouraged to include in our C&G history of embroidery - but of course I couldn't find many details about her then ... I found this looking for the work of Jennifer Rochester who I knew had used pebbles as inspiration. The gallery page is well worth looking at too.