Friday 30th May - Cover Story Collaboration

 Yesterday Ang  let me know that she had received the Cover Story stitching I sent her.

... Perhaps I should explain; this is the third stitching collaboration the Ang and I have done together. We started several years ago after she blogged about an sewing exhibition she went to in Norwich Castle, I think, which featured a 2020 Lockdown collaboration between two sisters. They took turns to embroider a motif of a piece of cloth that they posted to each other. I said I'd love to do one but would want to keep the cloth! To cut a long story short, Ang and I, strangers at the time, started 'The Postcard Project', followed it by 'Cross Country Collaboration' all in cross stitch, and are now most of the way through 'Cover Story' - a book cover each. 

And we've become friends, keeping in touch through emails and WhatsApp, very occasional phone calls, the booklet and postcard we include with the project and once, memorably, meeting up ...

So, on with this month's progress;

Here's what Ang did on the vertical seams on the piece which will ultimately become hers;

If you zoom in you will see all the lovely stitching she has done. We are taking our inspiration from Victorian crazy quilts, where the joins between patches were embellished with decorative stitches.

Here is mine;

We've both used perle cotton which gives a great texture, and simple stitches such as chain, blanket, stem, and. French knots. Ang used fly stitch, and I used chevrons and coral stitch. These stitches are transformed by lacing and weaving threads through them so they can look far more complicated than they really are.

We also include 'flat gifts' that fit in the packages; I sent Ang a pair of sporks to take on picnics.

I feel quite spoiled by Ang's flat gifts;

a sashiko kit, sunflower seeds in a card, and little booklet about hedgerows AND a lovely felt brooch! My birthday isn't for months!

This month we are doing the horizontal seams on each other's Cover Story cloths. 

It is such fun receiving the parcel each month, seeing what Ang has added and reading the story of how and why she created it in the accompanying notebook. 

Thank you Ang - I'm so glad we have begun to plan the next one!

Music

I heard a snatch of this on a TV program (all right, I confess, we like Antiques Road trip as background TV, in spite of the vastly irritating commentary)

Fingal's Cave - Mendelssohn 

When I was about 17 or 18 I was on a sailing trip on the West Coast of Scotland. My father, and the son of an Austrian friend of his were the most experienced sailors; another adult, Ian was cook and slightly experienced and a  schoolfriend of mine and I were enthusiastic but fairly ignorant crew members. Any trip anywhere with my father tended to be a series of 'exciting adventures' aka narrowly avoided disasters... this was no exception. 

But we successfully circumnavigated the Isle of Mull (a few tense minutes when we dragged our anchor one night) and travelled along the Crinan Canal. At one point we sailed past Fingals Cave; I was asleep as my father had decided the us two younger ones should take sea-sickness pills as the wind and waves were getting stronger and larger... 

Never mind, there's always YouTube these days!