650 Hours later

It is done.
Ella took it home and completed the extra outlines, added a few French knots and tied in some ends.

From January 8 where Valerie took the first stitch.

To June 27 2013 when Ella proclaimed it complete.

Caithness Textile Artists and some visitors have achieved an amazing piece of work.

The group were very privileged to take part in the Great Tapestry of Scotland.
It was an immense challenge learning about the History of Caithness in 1851, the Embroidery and also more about each other in the group. Ella, Celia and Dorothy had not done much embroidery before the project but are now very capable and will be incorporating it into their future crafting. Louise, Valerie, Shirley, Catherine and Joan had all done embroidery before but all learnt new stitches and stepped up their creativity.

The unseen part of the tapestry was the hours spent researching the history of the panel. Our panel had spaces around that had been left to us to fill. It was very important to the group to fill them with pertinent historically accurate scenes of Caithness and its people in that time.  As a group we are most certainly inspired by this County of Caithness up on the Far North of Scotland.

The Great Tapestry of Scotland will be displayed 3-22 September 2013 in the Scottish Parliament. I hope you all manage to go along to visit it and you too can point out our 'Hairy Brotag' and you know all the names of the characters we have gotten to love stitching.

Thank you for reading this blog.

Last Dash

Tuesday 25 June 2013

Our panel was not yet complete. We had passed the closing date by 2 days but we were thankful the Facebook group stated 'Don't rush the embroidery'.
In the morning the panel looked like this.

As you can see most of it has been completed. What a difference the outline makes.
What has been completed since the previous post is as follows.

Ella had the panel after Louise and she finished the croft and the fields behind the croft. She used a very close chain stitch which gave it the look of the lines of the fields behind her house. It frames the top of the panel lovely. She also added some lichen to the end of the stone wall.

She also completed the teachers blackboard which has the notes to Jesus Loves Me This I Know.

Dorothy added the Caithness Scorrie. A Scorrie is Caithness Dialect for a Seagull. She also added WK8 to the boats sail. WK is the Port Registration Number for the port of Wick. 8 is the number of stitchers this panel had.







Catherine finished the cliff with the Lighthouse. She added some French Knots and some straight lines for the sea.  There are numerous lighthouses around Caithness and in the Pentland Firth which is one of the fastest tidal races in the world where the Atlantic meets the North Sea twice a day.

This is Catherine adding a 'Hairy Brotag'

A Hairy Brotag is a caterpiller for the Tiger Moth. They are most comical creatures and can be found on the peats waggling their hairy bodies.

This is the final Alexander Bain Clock with the writing outlined

 Louise went to the Caithness Horizons Museum and found an electric motor that was made by Alexander Bain.




This is the final Morven panel. When the outline was added there was room for more stitching and Louise still wanted to dampen the blue of the flow country lochan.




This is the final Hen Harrier. Joan added some grasses and heather flowers.




This is the final Altnmarlich Cross. Celia added a couple of highlighting stitches and an outline to the lettering.




This was our party lunch. We had a feast worth of the hours spent stitching.

This is Dorothy adding up the hours and announcing how many we had entered into the book.

In the book there was over 570. It did not include the time spent researching, unpicking, trying out practice squares and the Tuesdays when we were all stitching at the same time.
We estimate it took us over 650 hours since January 8 2013.

On the days stitching the following was finally completed.


We had a visitor of Norma.

Her reaction was 'Wow, just Wow'.