Finished tapestry

This has to be a pretty huge accomplishment as it’s been in the pipeline for a VERY long while. This is a tapestry I got and started when I was a kid - maybe my mum can remember when exactly - but the date on the fabric says 1998. I’m sure it can only have been a few years after that maximum that I started it. This has been sat around in my craft room doing nothing since we moved into our house about 8 years ago and just getting in the way. I finally picked it up as this lockdown is all about finishing things that have been started. This is all I could see of it for years.

I started off working on the sky a little bit as I knew the bottom bit would be a bit fiddly with loads of different colours in little patches. Look at the difference in colour where I have just finished bits of the sky. It’s most obvious on the half white/half cream cloud at the bottom!

I got this far but then wanted to save the rest of the nice easy blue bit for the end when I’ll probably be bored of doing all the tricky bit.

Almost done. It was at about this time that I realised that the picture has a dark brown border around the whole thing. Having stuck to a straight line across the bottom and the print being ever so slightly wonky I had a decision to make - sew across the bottom of my stitching and have some print showing  below the border or follow the border at the bottom leaving a gap in my stitching that I would have to fill in later. I went for the latter option in the half hope that I might be able to make a double border on brown to save having to add in another row of the fiddly stuff.

And then I get the opportunity to see the other end of the picture that I haven’t seen for so many years!

I realised when I was about this far round that I wasn’t going to have enough brown to do a double border and I was going to have to fill the gap with the fiddly stuff. It wasn’t actually as bad as I thought, I just had to do a bit of creative stitching to match up what colours I thought should go where.

The tapestry was finally finished! I unwound the frame to see the whole picture for the first time.

 I was able to take it off the frame and lay it out to see the whole thing. I really don’t like the picture at all but it’s good to see it all done.

I’m pretty pleased with it to be honest. I’m not totally sure what I will do with it now - I’m struggling a little for inspiration given that I don’t like the image. If anyone has any ideas or knows anyone that I would like it. I would be happy to do what I can with it and let anyone have it for a small charity donation.