Going where the needle takes me on a NC500 sewing scroll ....

 I hope you enjoyed some previous posts about our recent trip exploring the North Coast of Scotland ... 

I often blog (alongside a travel journal) so the details are at hand for future reference. 

This was our NC500 Scottish trip = 

#1 - Exploring Scotland's Black Isle

#2 - Easter Ross along the coast

#3 - Wick & Sinclair castle

#4 -  The North Sea & coast of Scotland

#5 - Western Sutherland to Ullapool

#6 - Wester Ross to Skye

#7 - Crossing paths with the Picts in Scotland

After a busy year of working closely with pupils & their families as an Elective Home Education tutor, I like to take time to just clear the mind completely in our summer break before new academic diaries are filled with the overflow from the previous year. 

This year we do not have an international holiday booked so can enjoy the luxury of filling the day as I please & that is a huge privilege & pleasure for me. 

I have several sewing projects on the go, a monthly circular stitching one, a 100 day one (that has faltered as I have done other things)  and on a whim I took a length of white linen (that I use for many projects, I decided to start a Scottish scroll.  

     

There was no plan; just doodling with needle & thread to see where it goes, trusting your skills to take you where it will. That is the best sort of stitching for my intuitive mind. I am not a pattern follower at all, I like to just make it up as I go along & this is what I did. 

I moved some threads, cottons, a hoop & bits to the conservatory table which has a lovely view of the garden & then looking at my trip photos & a book we used along the way, I lightly sketched out some outlines with a frixon pen (heat erasable pen used in sewing) and decided I wanted to outline in black. I was not even sure I wanted to fill in, just stitched & outlined as I went along, completely without thought to scale, placements or timeline - just stitching for the pleasure of the repetitive nature of thread through fabric which is almost meditative. 

Somehow the outlines filled up the 150 cm fabric scroll, my interpretation of the scenes I had encountered & enjoyed. It is  intuitive, primitive stitching, none of the perfect scenes that are found commercially. I do not consider myself to be a textile artist, just a lover of textiles & art. 

My mother was a great embroiderer & sewer, as was her mother & grandmother.  They were more precise with their stitches - there was no quick online search to remind you of stitches etc somehow they were ingrained in their minds.  Their work was as neat on the back as the front but their work had purpose - tray & table cloths, clothes, crochet doilies, bibs for babies, covered coat hangers, cushions, sports bags - they did not baulk at making anything.

My sewing is more for pleasure now (though I did a special harvest apron recently) & I often browse instagram & pinterest for ideas & inspiration but that can be limiting because you get bogged down in too much detail & that hinders the doing. 

This is the conservatory where I have been working - the long rectory table taken up by beads, a felting sponge & stabber, multiple containers of threads of all sizes & colours, & of course multiple needles. 

Who else has loads of needles loaded up with all sorts of colours at the same time? 

I decided that I did not want to add fabrics to this scroll - I wanted the details to be in threads only. The reason being that fabrics would introduce too much choice & distraction again -   you know how you get side-tracked looking for a particular book then sit on the floor with books you have rediscovered? Fabrics are the same - too much choice is distracting. 

So I just dipped in to the container of threads & used threads for the details - lots of choices of shades in the various colours - a challenge to think of stitches for each part (a simple running stitch can be so versitile) & then trusty favourite stitches I use like French knots, fly stich, whipped running etc 

At Sinclair castle, I had pulled some sheep fur from the wire as we walked back along the windswept coast & I picked up another little bit of darker wool near Ullapool so I outlined some sheep & felted in the bits of wool I picked up. 

I picked up a large straight shell, some small drift wood & other shells on the beach at Dunnet Links, Strathy & Farr beaches & at Skerray Bay, so I decided to add a  beach to the scroll.  Some of the sheep wool was again felted / jabbed on to the linen as the soft, white sands of those stunning beaches & then beads were added.  Beading is best done in good light as the needles are so thin & the thread is fine too but the effect is worth it. 

Because the scroll was unplanned, the width is too big for my vintage wooden bobbins - however, the driftwood & shell will make good bobbins to wind the work around. That is the final step - backing the untidy reverse side with a lovely soft purple linen which will be handstitched to the 150cm scroll & attaching the driftwood support parts. 

You will have to come back for that finished bit in about a week. 

What is keeping you busy at this time - tell all. Thank you for your company, it is always appreciated. 

Dee 🚣‍♀️🚙🪡🧵🧶 🐚🦪🌊⛰️