V

I have mentioned before that this is a letter less represented in most commercial ranges of initialed products. It is also both my mother's and my best friends initial.

I found a broach for framing a small cross stitch or embroidery.  I wanted to make something for my mother as a Christmas gift.  The material I used has featured here before.  At this point I had made the  small-owls. but not the da-vincis-la-sacpigliata .

Once I had the material sorted I counted the available stitches and started looking through my pattern books.  I did find one and chose to stitch it with one thread over one.  As is often the case I miscalculated the available time and was stitching right up to the last moment.  I finished all of the cross-stitches and reached the backstitch.  At which point I there was a hitch, normally I would be working with two strands for the cross stitch and one for the backstitch.  It had not occurred to me  until I was at that stage, what was I going to backstitch with.  Now you can't split a single strand of floss (I did try it looks like it works but disintegrates when you try to sew).  Then I thought normal sewing thread might be thin enough, it wasn't, at the time no internet access or shopping so I was stuck.

Backstitch was necessary to the design as you can see and I was sitting utterly frustrated looking around feeling rather despondent.  When my eye fell upon a solution, a mad strange positively Victorian solution.  I thought about it and the madness of it and the appropriateness in an odd twisted way and decided to go with it.

Was Victorian enough of a clue?  No, well how about a little personal information, I have mid brown hair, a few strands of which are darker than others, and I wear it long.  Yes, as I despaired and looked down at the design, I saw my hair.  There was something thin enough, long enough, strong enough and just dark enough to do the job.  Always getting caught in sewing projects when I did not want it to (never mind clogging up the hoover and blocking the plugs) it amused me that this time hair in a project would be intentional.  It took two full strands to complete the backstitch and I  finished just in time to wrap it Christmas Eve.

Happily my Mother was also amused with her hair broach.

I would have used the same method to do the backstitching on La Scapigliata had I done the backstitching called for in the pattern.