Taking a deep breath and beginning

 One of the main pieces for Scotland involves seven bobbins with seven hand stitched scrolls. As ever, a lot of preparation has happened to get to this point where a needle goes near fabric.

Firstly I had to try and find seven wooden bobbins. We were lucky to come across a stash in a nearby antique shop so we snaffled them and brought them home. I was trying to work out the descending measurements and B kindly cut the bobbins that needed reduction, and we glued them back together so there are now 3 pairs of different sizes, and one large central bobbin.

Another step involved having seven sort of matching rusty tins, so I painstakingly went through my rusty tin stash and tried to pull together seven tins that were siblings and might be able to go together. 

I learned how to hand stitch run and fell seams to create the seven scrolls (after all the fussing that went into measuring and choosing fabric).

I bought a bunch of embroidery threads that I thought might suit the work, and which complemented my own threads which I had chosen.

I had created a very long list of words - a bit like a shopping list but different - and then transferred some of them onto the fine fabric.

And started stitching.

I am very conscious that there is a lot of stitching to do, and I am still strangely anxious about overdoing it and damaging my hand again, so I am going slowly.

But the first scroll is done!

Cautiously, and slowly, onwards.