Stitching Stories

‘We were total novices when we embarked on this project and although we knew each other from being part of a book group, our sewing skills were very limited.

When we received our panel on Christmas Eve 2022, it was literally a blank canvas – 14 stones with area names below them and swirling threads joining them all together.  To put it mildly, we were overwhelmed!

In the New Year we got together regularly in person and came up with ideas for each stone, although we didn’t always use the first idea and often had to come up with a new design. 

After attending one of the group meetings at the Spectrum Centre in Inverness, and having gathered some wonderful pieces of tweed in a variety of colours, we met one Saturday morning at Aileen’s house and took the bull by the horns.  We tried some applique by filling in the unusual shapes in between the threads with pieces of tweed.  Once we had put something on the panel we started to feel more confident about what we were doing.

We all worked individually in our own homes on the stones we had decided to complete but always made time to get together at someone’s house to share our progress and encourage each other.  There was always a lot of laughter, tea and even some stitching at these get togethers!

Tricia, one of the stitchers from another group, kindly spent some time with us to show us how to make felt stones and also how to make cords.  We used these cords to cover and follow the threads on the panel.

Once the panel was completed we experienced a great sense of achievement and although we still consider ourselves novices we are very pleased with the result.’