Blackwork in red

Last weekend Richard and I headed off to the beautiful coastal town of Bosham, West Sussex for a few days. I wanted to take some craft with me, but didn’t want a massive bag as I had a suspicion (later proved right) that I’d do more snoozing than crafting. So I decided to take an empty piece of canvas, some thread and a couple of patterns with me.

Blackwork, at least in the size I’m working at, is an excellent travel project. I don’t mean for doing on the move, I don’t fancy my chances of threading a needle, or getting the right point on the canvas - I tried that once when I was making this and won’t be trying it again in a hurry. I mean that it packs into a small bag, and needs very few accompaniments - a pair of scissors, a needle, some thread. It’s pretty compact.

The pattern I chose to work up was adapted from the bottom right hand corner of this picture simplified and scaled to work on it’s own. I chose to do it in red cotton for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I was curious to see how a different, non black, colour would work. And secondly, because I had red thread left over from the screen part of the calculator iPhone case and using up leftovers feels good :-)

This was quite a simple design, and I really like how it looks. Once I’ve done a few more of these squares, I think I’m going to attempt to turn them into lavender bags.