Month: December 2023

One of the other things I found while packing is this unfinished coat/robe thing, buried at the bottom of the blanket box. It’s very simply constructed – the fronts, back and sleeves are just rectangles, sort of kimono-style, with a couple of curves at the neck and squares under the arms to allow for movement.

I think I started it a couple of years ago, maybe longer. At the time I was imagining a storyteller’s coat: some kind of outlandish motley garment with bits of fairytale stitched over it. The back has a fairytale castle made from fabric scraps applied to the surface:

And in context:

I think it was at that point that I ran out of steam and buried it under a pile of old sheets. Looking at it today, I can see what the problem is.

I really like the fabrics I’ve used to cover the surface – they’re pale tertiary blues, greens, browns, greys and purples, just stitched down as a collage rather than pieces of patchwork. But I seem to have used an old sheet as the foundation, and it’s made the whole thing far too heavy, very bulky, and too difficult to stitch by hand. I’m going to unpick all the scraps and reuse them for something else, and then reuse the sheet foundation as well – possibly dye it and piece it together as something else. I think of it as a kind of reincarnation.

I had also made a lining for it, in the same simple style, using a midnight blue medium-weight silk. Three layers of coat was always going to be unmanageable – unlikely that I’ll ever be anywhere that cold, for one thing, and it was too heavy to be comfortable.

So I’m in the process of undoing, and it feels quite liberating. An unfinished thing can become a bit of a millstone, I find. It nags at you from its dark corner. If you can find a way, persuading it to be something else is usually best. With a bit of vintage silk sari trim I’m turning the lining into a dressing gown:

I’m absolutely not a dressmaker, and clothes of any kind are usually a challenge for me, but I’m particularly pleased with the integral loop for hanging it on the back of the door:

The ends of the tape are buried under the edges of the sari trim, stitched down through all layers.

I’ll cut out the fairytale castle part from the back and turn that into something else – some sort of wallhanging, or a cushion cover, or maybe even the centre of a quilt. And with a pile of pretty scraps from the rest of it – well, the possibilities are endless.

So while I unpick this little lot, I’m taking some time off. Please be patient if you need to contact me; I may not respond as quickly as usual. I’ll be back here (briefly) on New Year’s Eve with the completed 2023 stitch journal, but until then I wish you every happiness of the season.