Scottish Tapestry Update

Over Christmas I had a turn at the Scottish Tapestry Panel again. This is The Great Tapestry of Scotland that I blogged about here.
Our group of 12 stitchers have been working hard and the animals are starting to fill in now.

 Here is Susan’s gorgeous beaver. Isn’t he lovely? I love the way she did his tale.

Joy has finished her very neatly stitched fox, Gillian is working on the beautiful birch trunks and Morag has started on the woman’s sleeve.

In my last post I talked about the aurochs (large extinct cow) that I was about to start. I showed you some samples I had produced. Well I went for the swirly chain stitch. It’s been very laborious, requiring many hours of stitching. As you can see while I have been working on the aurochs, the boar and the stag have sprung to life around it! Susan also did a fantastic job on the boar and Marg worked on the stag (close up of this coming soon). You can also see the beginnings of Joan’s faun too.

This is how far the aurochs had got before my recent session. I really wanted to get it finished! But I had been working on it mostly at night (and even in the day it has been so dark recently!), and I had failed to notice that I had started off using a lighter and a darker grey (left hand side of beast) but at some point had carried on with the lighter grey and a slightly darker grey (middle and to right)! I only noticed this in daylight, and was quite despairing! Anyway Liz and Gillian were on hand to help me that day and together we came up with a solution…

 Meanwhile Elizabeth completed all of the birch leaves in one long session! She did a beautiful job.

 And Eliz finished her raptor, complete with this tiny fish all glistening with metallic threads!

Nikhat, who had the panel just before me, finished all of the pine leaves. I love how she has tackled these spiky leaves.

And here is Marg’s spectacular stag. He has been keeping me company the whole time I stitched the auroch!
And stitch I did, until my fingers bled and I got the b***** aurochs finished! Hurrah! (Except for the horns *sigh*) but at least they are started.

I ‘swirled’ the darker grey on top of the dark grey and the dark grey on top of the darker grey to disguise my mistake, and I think this has actually really added to the textural look of the whole thing. So in the end it was a happy mistake!
After not being too sure about him the whole way through, I am now very pleased and proud with the way he has turned out. The photos don’t really do the panel justice, hopefully one day you will all be able to see it in the flesh (as long as you come to Scotland!).
The panel’s now with Liz and Katherine who are working on the fish, and next I’m moving on to the cave woman’s hair.
If anyone is interested in more info about the project, here’s a post from another Scottish blogger whose working on panel no 155, with just 1 other person! Very impressive stitching Starfish!