and some stitching

I'm still stitching away on the City and Guild projects, each a little exercise in a group of stitches.  The latest piece is taking it's time, and mine, in between visits to York and the Quilt Museum, which was delightful as always.

This was the source - from one of our splash and splosh days at Barbara's

And this the work in progress. The colours aren't quite as disparate, but one was taken by lamplight and one by daylight. Fabric, a zingy recycled shirt found in the Lakes in a charity shop.

The idea in this one is to use composite stitches like raised chain band, guilloche, pekinese, amongst others and interpret the splishes and sploshes in the collage. It is slow but fun, and should be followed by three exercises in counted thread work, - canvas, cross and blackwork.

However I need to get the inspiration and the preparatory stitchings together for my final piece, which is based on this lovely pot that you can find here

She's a goddess of creatures, mistress of the animals, and dates from about 680 BC, called Potnia Theron. From this I got to this, with apologies for the poor reproduction of the drawn image

Again, a bit of splish and splosh as we were encouraged to explore our image, hence the collage, which could translate in to an interesting applique at some stage. The gold of the fabric, which will be quieter in the final piece, is one of the hankies I dyed here.  It seems fitting that a  little goddess cloth should have one of Mum's myriad of hankies as its base - with a  muslin backing to give it some substance. In the hemmed edge of the hankie there is a little row of three birds who will be her animal representatives. I want to use toning, quiet colours that fit with the original image, which is black on terracotta. I have to get this "idea" in by next weekend, which means this week as I have to go up country to visit my Aunt Cecil next weekend and get her settled down for Christmas.