A Very Long Tail

Generally, I have two WIPs (Work in Progress) on the go at a time. I have one on my stand in the sewing room. This is usually a larger piece that will take several months, if not years, to reach completion. Such a piece was most likely started in a class. Following the class it may have gone into hibernation either immediately or when I next attended a class and started something else. I mostly work on this piece at the weekend or on days off. During the summer months, I may work on it for a while before or after work.

During the evenings I like to have what I refer to as a sofa project. These tend to be smaller projects, both in size and the time I expect them to take, and something I can manage while watching television at the same time. Once started, I usually stick with a sofa project until it is completed but there have been a few that I did not for one reason or another. Recently, I have been working on the fourth in the series of Casket Keepsakes (and loving it). It is nearly complete but I need to make some finger loop braids before I can finally finish it. Each braid takes me over an hour to make and, once started, I have to keep going until it is finished and concentrate fully. I have not been able to find the time to make them yet. So, I needed something else to do in the evenings but was reluctant to start a new project until the Keepsakes are done.

Looking for a "little" something to do, I came across one of the sofa projects that I had stalled. I started the Bird Thimble ten years ago and it had taken me about two months to make its body. I was very pleased with it but that was only the first of four online lessons. I then moved onto the second lesson which was to make the tail feathers.

I mentioned in Dressing the Bird that starting the cover for the body was a little bit fiddly … to say the least! Starting each of the feathers was also a little fiddly and I did not seem to get any easier no matter how many feathers I made … and I made a lot of them (eventually). Like the body, the feathers are detached buttonhole stitch on a silver wire. The wire travels back and forth to form a series of concentric ‘U’ shapes.

© The Essemplaire/Carol-Anne Conway

The feathers are either five or seven rows wide and either one, two, or three centimeters long, although mine are not very consistent in length. There is a total of 66 feathers stitched in nine different colours, just under half of them in the same yellow green as the body.

I don’t know exactly why this project stalled but I remember that I was struggling with these little feathers. In my progress report of February, 2013, I wrote,

"The bird thimble holder, which I forgot to mention last month, has not progress very much. His body is complete and I have begun to make the many, many tail feathers but because I usually work on these during the evening they have fallen victim of my S.A.D.ness. I will probably resume work on this when the lighter evenings return."

S.A.D.ness referring to seasonal affective disorder brought on by the dull, grey weather. I did not resume work when the lighter evenings returned and the project languished for ten years.

When I resumed making the feathers, I still found the process fiddly. Fiddly but not quite the struggle that I remember them being before and I can only attribute that to the hours I spent doing buttonhole stitch on the carnation and cornflower petals for the Spring Casket Keepsakes. At first, it took me an entire evening to make one feather but quite quickly I was able to make three or four in an evening, depending on the size. Initially, I thought it might take me several weeks to complete them but, in fact, it took little over two weeks.

© The Essemplaire/Carol-Anne Conway

Happy Stitching