Flax and stitching slowly

 I began basting this lovely fabric way back here.  I had in mind some work to trial and play with seeing if it was possible to do pebble -like things with it.

It took about a month for it to get done and in between times, lots of other ideas for it have floated in and I am now considering taking the scissors to some of it! Stay tuned.

Front.

And back. Love how wild the stitching gets in places.

Holding and thinking about the fabric made me to pick up some other threads. I had done the basting using a single strand DMC embroidery thread, but began to wonder about the actual stitching into and onto the fabric with this flax.

I had been gifted two skeins of flax on our last visit to Scotland and had wondered what I could do with it. I had grand plans for making a lovely cord like I made here, but may I say the flax had very different ideas!

Barry helped me to undo one skein and to try and pull a single thread out so that I could create some cord. That took quite a while and I realised that I was never going to be able to make cord.

This is the skein unravelled, but the next step of trying to extricate a single thread is so time consuming it is very hard to contemplate.

These next shots show what the flax does. It attaches itself to itself. It is sticky. It is knotty. It has absolutely no interest in separating itself from the skein. There must be a technical term to describe this tenacious characteristic.

As they say, nevertheless I persisted and over several days and nights sitting in front of the tv I managed to release a few metres of flax thread. You can still see how even wound onto the card it is still fluffy.

I hope it will be worth it as the thread looks like it will be the perfect shade for stitching onto the fabric I have prepared.

We shall see!