Metalwork Fox

Having finished the embroidery for the two projects at the Spring Retreat, I turned to the final project of my March visit to England, the metalwork fox. I chose to stick to the order in which we worked at Hampton Court, so  worked the passing thread around and around on the back of the fox, the up and down on the face. It took a bit of thinking to get the required circular effect on the back and fill in the bits that wouldn’t fit into the oval shape, but it wasn’t too hard. The face lift an alarming amount of plunging to be done!

The plunging was nothing, of course, to the ends that then needed to be secured on the back!

The chips were quite relaxing after that. Even the cut work proved to be ok. I took it along to a first Sunday Come and Stitch at the Guild and got quite a lot done.

I was pretty pleased with the result - but it is a simple, well designed project that doesn’t require great experience.

I had in mind to mount it on the lid of a small box that was advertised at Create in Stitch, however, when I got to the shop they had sold out, but were not, in any case, quite big enough. 

What they did have, however, was an oval glass paperweight. It was ALMOST the right size. It covers up a tiny bit of the purl  pearl along the bottom, but the reflection makes up for it. The other advantage is that, while not perfectly airtight, it does reduce the chance of tarnish.

The embroidery is stretched over an oval base that comes with the glass and would normally be secured down with a cork base with a peel-off sticky back. In this case the thickness of the embroidery meant that the cork base didn’t stick uniformly around the edge. After some hesitation I helped it out with a couple,of drops of superglue.

I’m delighted with this result. It stops papers blowing around on my table and looks great.