finish my embroidery projects

one small one
one big one

Actually, after worrying a little about the sky in my piece, I remembered that I had a stroke of luck way back in August.

I was living in Hackney for a month, and while I was there, I was mostly alone. Most of the people who had lived in the house - a huge seven bedroom, three bathroom place with a marvellous garden - had abandoned the place along with a serious chunk of their possessions.

For most of the month I was there, I passed this bag of what looked like knitting going up down the stairs.

When I was packing up and getting ready to leave, the one and only guy who spoke for the house said to me, “Look mate, if you see some stuff you want, take it, because noone is coming back for this stuff.”

So I took the bag of knitting and some other stuff, including a beautiful hand painted Kosta Boda vase. It wasn’t until when I was going through my stuff when I was leaving Peckham that I went through the bag properly, and discovered a seriously nice haul of embroidery threads and craft threads down in the bottom. I got some other needle craft supplies, but the thread was the real find.

So yesterday, I remembered the threads from Hackney and went and had a comb through. Now while they aren’t all an exact match, the shades are close enough that I think I’ll manage to finish the sky without it looking ‘off’.

Best yet, a couple days ago, my brother announces that the threads, embroidery patterns and what not I thought I had lost when I left Trinidad to go to England, were in fact in Trinidad waiting for me.

So all is not lost! :D

I have almost completely run out of the sky blue colours to finish the sky.

I’ve been to every store in Bridgetown that sells embroidery thread. The best of the three, Nichols on Swan Street, has a whole lot of thread, but not the right shade. I mean, why is it people don’t believe in Coats and Clarks any more?

I dread the thought of pulling out all that thread, to redo the sky in a more accessible colour… and right now I am kicking myself because I KNEW I should have gone back to the store I found the thread in back in England, and stocked up before I got home. But then it was too expensive… Twenty quid for the train fare up and back and 65p a skein… sure I needed about six or eight.

I can’t even figure out where I could get these threads online, and how could I pay for them?

This is going to prove frustrating, I can tell!! It’s already frustrating!

I worked on this about six hours a day, for the five months between April and September 1995, so I could finish it for my mother’s birthday in October that year.

I had to finish in early September so I had enough time to post it to her and for it to arrive.

It is actually a sort of reproduction in cotton and thread of a printed poster she sent me. It was much smaller, and used different colours, and there were other features I changed. However, I took the basic design of the poster, drew it on cloth much larger and proceeded to fill it all in with thread.

It’s actually a large-ish piece. It’s about the size of 11×14 paper. This is the most complete piece I’ve ever worked on. Looking at it now, it’s amazing how much work I did on it

I’ve decided to treat this piece I’m working on as an ebbo for my Egun.

See.. I started this piece within a matter of hours after my best friend Christine died. That was five years ago.

I worked on it steadily for several months, and then lost my inspiration and stopped. Then I started again about a year later, and then stopped again, except it was years until recently that I picked it up again.

I’d take it out and look at it, I even showed it to some people, but even though I had thread until I came to England, I just couldn’t finish it.

Maybe my spirit knew I was pregnant and this is why it JUMPED into my hand again recently. The Yoruba believe that Ancestors are reincarnated within their own bloodline. Because this piece, for me is a celebration of life… in particular a celebration of Christine (Keffi’s) life, and literally I started working on it again a few weeks after getting pregnant (although I didn’t know it at the time), this is a piece now tied up with both life and death.

I want to finish it, and make it an offering to my Ancestors. I want to make it beautiful and place it in their shrine. I rarely keep the pieces I finish. I tend to give them away; and indeed, I had planned to give this piece to preciousc at one point.

I find it also interesting that I started working on this piece again, a mere few weeks into her show of an abysmal lack of loyalty and her abandonment of the link I thought we shared because of Chris. In some ways, I realise I have to let Chris go. I allowed preciousc to get close to me, and went out of my way to help her because she claimed to Chris’s good friend. In retrospect now, I realised Chris NEVER trusted her shortly after she ingratiated herself into my life, and hence I never should have.

For me, my friendship with preciousc was a way of holding on to the truly PRECIOUS love my SISTER Christine and I shared. In some ways, it was a way of trying to keep that love alive. This is why I said I would give it to her when I finished it. But it was misplaced. How could I have hoped to keep Chris alive in such a pale comparison? That’s my mistake.

Yet… I realised after all the detailing was done… something like four and a half years ago, I couldn’t finish it. I just mentally couldn’t thread the needle and push the thread through the fabric anymore. Then between getting pregnant (although I didn’t know it at the time) and preciousc’s betrayal, it jumped back into my hand like I said, and I haven’t really be able to put it down since.

If I needed a sign… a sign from Chris, a sign from Ancestors, a sign that I should mourn either Chris anymore, and definitely not false friendship… I think this is it.

This piece is a celebration of LIFE! A celebration of Chris’s life… a celebration of the LIFE within me that is growing.

I am proud, PROUD to be this baby’s mother. PROUD an Ancestor chose me at last to come through into life to BE a BEAUTIFUL reflection of God’s grace (Thanks Lauryn Hill). I am PROUD Christine chose me to be her SISTER… to love, trust and believe in me… the way I loved and believed in her. I am PROUD that despite the hopes and bitter disappointments of the last couple of months, I still have friends, love and family and the things that matter most to me.

So this piece is a CELEBRATION OF LIFE! A work in progress still, to be sure… but I plan to teach my child how to celebrate LIFE, even if it’s a work in progress.

So I went down to the Thread Shop today, and was pleased as punch that the threads were affordable and got enough to finish the piece I mentioned in my previous post on the matter.

I was like a little kid in a candy shop, and it’s a good thing I didn’t have much money or I was going to lose all my good sense in that shop. As it is, the £6 I did spend (on thread and an 8in embroidery hoop) was well spent.

I’ve been stitching most of today…

Ha! Ha! I love this!

I found this this little thread shop in the town I’m staying in at the moment. I actually found it some weeks ago, but went today to explore for the first time.

Part of the reason why I haven’t been doing more embroidery recently is because I have no thread. That’s no excuse though, because I gave away boxes and boxes of embroidery thread, fifty year old transfers, fabric… a whole load of stuff to my brother’s step-daughter’s Girl Guiding unit when I was leaving Trinidad because I didn’t see the practicality in leaving it behind unused until whenever I got back to it, or to bring that huge box with me. Also, I hadn’t been doing much embroidery the whole year or so before I left to come up to England.

Instead, I brought my unfinished pieces and an AMAZING piece of fabric PERFECT for heavy embroidery, thinking I’d just buy some thread when I got here. Except wunna done know my stories since I been up here, and it’s not so easy to find a store selling Coats & Clarks… you’d think it would be, but it ain’t.

So I went today to have a look in the store and see if there was any good thread to be had cheap. I just find I’m getting the urge to stitch again. I find it immensely relaxing and I love working with the colourful threads… and the precision required appeals to my Virgo ascendent! :D

Alas, the store is closed until next Tuesday…

But I am going on Tuesday morning!!! Bright and early! Hopefully I can find some thread I can afford so I can finish a piece I’ve been sitting on for about five years.

And I promise not to start any new projects until my current ones are finished :)