Millie Marotta's Fox embroidered

I've fallen in love. Head over heels. With a, uhm, fox... A certain famous embroidery blog lady from America introduced us. Alas, what can you do? It was love at first sight. All other projects simply will have to wait. Thanks Mary Corbet, you're the best excuse for procrastinating a silk shading hollyhock, a Schwalm angel and a pair of Bavarian braces!

Isn't it fascinating how you can sometimes see an illustration or image and instantly a picture forms in your mind of the corresponding embroidery? Such things can really keep me awake. I practically start to stitch the piece at night in my head. That's silly, I know. But that's how it goes, isn't it? Luckily, my copy of Millia Marotta's colouring book for grown-ups arrived at the bookstore last week.

During the night, my brain seems to be at its absolute best. Not only did I stitch several versions of the fox already, I also figured out thread and fabric choices. Very cool this grey matter.

Several years ago, I bought a piece of a heavy weight pure silk damask. The bright white silk has a pretty paisley design. My stash also includes several yummy skeins of variegated perle #12 by House of Embroidery as well as a skein of Gloriana silk and several spools of metallic threads. My night time stitch adventures did not include the latter. However, whilst discussing the design at the bookstore (!) with three men (!!!) it was put forward. Don't these burnt oranges, corn yellows and copper tones make you think of a fox already?

So, I duly dressed my frame with the very nice silk, hunted for all the threads and waited until it was dark outside. Real stitching at night time? Nope. I've just found that using a light box for tracing the design is so much easier when the room is dark. Normally that is. This oh so nice silk turns out to be a tracer's nightmare. Oh dear. Not only is it hard to see through, on the smooth parts of the paisley's my aqua trick marker runs. No neat tracing lines in sight. This was our first major relationship crisis.

I figured that if ink runs on certain parts of the fabric, there's a good chance that the paint of the prick and pounce transfer method does as well. Apart from that risk, this intricate design requires a very steady hand able to paint very thin lines. Not going to happen when you are going through your first major relationship crisis.

So what did I do? Well, I copied the design onto tissue paper and now I am in the process of tacking all important design parts. It is very, very slow going. But what do they always say: you have to work at your relationship. Well, work it certainly is!