Fishy business

We who are Sussex Stitchers had a lovely Zoom workshop on Saturday afternoon with Becky Hogg who lives just down the coast in Hastings. We all worked on the same project, a kit by her called Hastings Mackerel. My good man bought me mine for Christmas. It is a delightful design, as are all of hers, and presented in lovely packaging - I still have two awaiting my attention from the last workshop we did with her - the woodpecker which took me so long to complete.

Becky is a generous and charming tutor and, making the most of social technology, she set up a WhatsApp group so we can communicate in between sessions, sharing pictures of our work and asking her questions where advice is needed.

So, after a Sunday morning’s gardening, I spent the afternoon completing the first stage of the project. On Saturday Becky talked us through applying the felt, the organza for his back, and his silver fishy face and beginning the couching on on his silky silver belly.

Using the giraffe as a table frame was really helpful

The back seems to be inadvertently rather fishy in texture as well

I completed the couching on Sunday. I felt it had, perhaps, encroached rather too far into the other half of the body, the stitching was far from regular and that I had squished the felt a bit by being slightly too firm with my stitching, but it made me smile, and reminded me of a squid.

Then I decided that perhaps it did look a bit flat, and really was too far across the middle line. Mindful of Rachel's patient unpicking in pursuit of perfection, the scissors came out and all but the first two rows were taken out.

Lining up the away knots and setting in the next row - more on, rather than over the central line and with a bigger interval between each starting point

I come to the conclusion that the central line is perhaps, not quite central, but the belly is more rounded, the stitching is more even and, interestingly, I found I had space for one more row of silver. There is a little bit more space for the mackerel stripes too, which I'm looking forward to.

I love the way the moiré pattern of the folded organza gives my fish some water to swim through 

Next time we will be finishing; plunging the thread, if there are any left to plunge, adding the mackerel stripes to the back, the pearl purl outlines and giving him an eye to see with and a tail to swish as he swims about on the Hastings shoreline.