Hand towel

 I like to make Christmas presents for friends. The trick is to make something they want, not simply something I like to make. One friend, who likes hand-made gifts, grew up in India. She has recently moved to a new home in Adelaide, so I thought I would embroider her a hand-towel, with Indian motifs.

A bit to my own surprise, I found a cross-stitch design of 'Sunset Taj" that I had kept from a magazine, so began with that.

'Sunset' meant in three shades of blue, making it far more like night than sunset. However, I stuck with the blue but definitely night, It worked well, but looked too small on its own on the towel. I tried other Indian motifs, like elephants, but the scale was badly wrong.

After looking at dozens of photos of the Taj Mahal, I decided to embroider a version of the trees that line the approach to the Taj.

The trees are very dark green, and highly sculpted, although not uniform.

To this I added (but, alas, did not photograph) a crescent moon. As I finished it, I decided it was a mad idea. Who, after all, ever sees the Taj by moonlight?

My friend was delighted. One of her earliest memories, she told me, is of being taken, as a child of 7 years, through a gate, to see the Taj Mahal by moonlight - an image she has kept all her life!  Blew my mind!