Jenny's Sampler.

Well, I have recently completed my piece on Jenny's sampler and here it is.



The picture below shows the whole sampler as it stands at this moment.




The beautiful Hardanger work is by Jenny herself. I really wish I could do justice to her work in a photograph. The orange band is by Margaret. It's a delightful design of sea horses and shells. My design simply had to follow on......... Not an easy task.



I was going through a phase of being fascinated by Chinese and Japanese art. So I trawled the books, including this rather good one.



The piece sat on my project board for what seemed like ages. Then I happened to find a website for Tattoo artists. I found it when I searched for Koi online. I had decided that it just had to be a pair of Koi, but I needed a starting point.
I had planned a trip to the local gardens and look at the Koi and draw them. I completed the search first. You can see the image I found at the bottom left. This was twisted, colour added and copied to produce two Koi.



I found the design work to be the easier part. What really got me in a mess was sorting out which stitches to use. I knew I wanted to use blackwork - or a modern variant. But which stitches. This took me literally months of trial and error.

What I found really interesting about the whole process was the recognition that Tattoo artists and embroiderers are looking for the same things when judging images. The images I saw on the Tattoo website were beautifully clear portrayals of an object - I shall look again for a similar website next time. I only wish I had had the foresight to keep the website in my favourites file!

Now the sampler is ready and waiting to be sent on the next stage of the journey.
I do hope you like it.