Post101: Iter Autem and Iterations

I awoke to two emails prompted by yesterday's post. In Brussels Genevieve is helping her son furnish a home, mostly with recycled and renovated furniture and fittings. This resonates and sounds like a lot of fun to me. Good on them.

The second email was from Christine in Watford. She is still pretty limited in what she can do outside the house. I'm glad she approves of my Nicola birds, since it is her example of the same which has been my reference point. Christine supplied the title for this post, in answer to my Quo vadis question. She is, of course, absolutely right - the only answer, keep marching!

I spent the whole day working on the Silver Eye. 

This is iteration 1.  I completed the border and filled in the background with seed stitch, and some French knots behind the green, which, I thought, needed something more definite.

I didn't, however, like the yellow bits on the head. It was partly the colour, and partly the stitch.



It wasn't easy to unpick, because it had been put in before the other colours, but I did it with scissors and and tweezers. I replaced it with stem stitch in the very limy green.

Iteration 2 a big improvement I think.










In  Iteration 3 I traced the legs and feet on to paper, cut out the bird (scary),








positioned it on the fabric,



and appliqued it. Without the legs, the only tricky bit was the beak.






Iteration 4, adding the legs, was not straightforward. Getting the angle right took a bit of fiddling, but it was a lot better than applique.

I also went over the beak again.


By then I had an urge to finish the project.





I cut out the fabric into a carry bag shape and raided my cotton fabric stash for lining fabric.

Iteration 5, making the bag, took some time but I have made enough of these now to be able to do it fairly efficiently.  Even so, I broke a needle, attached the handles upside down and stitched the base as a side panel before getting it right.

















It needs a good steam iron, which will happen tomorrow. Iteration 6.

I have enough of the fabric to make another one, and I also have two more of Nicola's birds. I'm in two minds about starting on another one while waiting for my Crewel Work Company parcel.







Because the balcony got vacuumed and washed this morning I didn't put seed out until Turtle held a sit-in waiting for me in the afternoon. He cleared up all but 3 seeds in next to no time. I think it must be good manners in the dove world to leave a token amount of food behind.




I dug out the owl bag I worked on planes in Feb/March and also Phillipa's Redwork Rabbit, which I'm going to tuck into a space on my chair, but knitting won. I've worked about 4 rows of the Fair Isle scarf this evening.

In the afternoon I watched the TV coverage of the Black Lives Matter rallies around Australia. Attendance was a hard call for many in these times. So pleased they were well attended, orderly and as far as was possible, adhering to health requirements. Christine's Iter Autem was appropriate in more way than one today. We need to keep pressure on our governments to implement all the recommendations of the Black Deaths in Custody Royal Commission.