Wednesday 5th November - October 2By2

 This also gives me another 9for9 scavenger hunt item - LEAF 

That's very satisfying! 

This is the explanation I sent to Ang with my stitching. I held off posting about it until I knew she had received it,

2By2 Stitching - October 2025

I’ve been watching the leaves turning colour through the month, and knew that I wanted to do something along these lines. I also thought I’d use the variegated threads Ang sent in the last 2By2 package, as they were the perfect shades for what I had in mind. I searched on-line for ideas, and originally found a drawing of four leaves arranged in a rough square, with the stalks pointing inwards. That was my first attempt, on the right of the photograph. As I stitched away I grew gradually less and less satisfied with how it was going…

I went back to the internet for more research, and came across this lovely piece by Karen Turner, an artist I follow. She will have created this using hand-dyed silk threads on a beautiful antique French cloth – a bit out of my league!  

Suitably motivated, I got going again and added a bright holly-coloured green thread, to just bring the sewing to life, and created the left-hand square which I’m more pleased with. They still looked unfinished, somehow, so I combined a strand of that pesky fiddly-diddly rainbow glitter thread and added a few random stars and woven stars here and there. As for the stitches – back stitch, seed stitch, stem stitch, spit stitch, chain stitch and satin stitch, and then whatever in-and-outs with the needle happened along the way. As usual I mounted the patch onto the paper before I started sewing, which makes it a bit challenging to manage the beginnings and endings of threads, but hopefully they are all caught on the underside.  

I've sent the left-hand square to Ang and kept the other. I neglected to say that they are sown on another sample of linen from fabworks. 

I created this post on 31st October - oh, such blessed foresight!