Silly me. I was on a roll with my 60cm x 40cm entry piece for the Oceania Distance and Diversity cal, and well into the business of stitching my chosen Aussie motifs by hand; but I allowed myself to just get little bit of a start on my next Pandemic Pattern piece and as a result lost my concentration. Christmas and New Year came and went before I focused on it again… and when I picked it up to resume a few days ago, I saw lots of things ‘wrong’ with it – things I no longer like about it, and additionally, and in the meantime a new approach had taken root. Reluctantly I abandoned it and with determination decided to start again from scratch.

As I worked on a little landscape design in Richard McVetis’ workshop, it occurred to me that I could have fused all those little landscape pieces rather than piece them, setting them slightly apart so that some of the background shows through.

I reasoned it wouldn’t take long to start again, so I abandoned what I’d already done and made a new sample using this approach, left, including some possible edge markings that I still haven’t finally decided on. Just this bit of experimenting tells me I’ll have a result I’ll be happier with. and it has to be soon – entries close at the end of January 🙂

• There are some fabrics steeping in a strong tea bath to dull their bright whiteness.
• I’ve sprayed some new sky fabric
• The background will now be black instead of blue.
• I’ve checked my range of marker pens online for fastness and suitability for fabric.
• I decided to hand draw the detail motifs I want.

Pandemic Pattern 3’s on hold while I wait for more thread which was gobbled up far faster than I expected, and I need much more to complete the rather large plan I have, as I’m definitely not going to make the work smaller.