Most days it’s really pleasant to be out stitching on our beautiful patio (Mike’s the one with green fingers) but today it’s raining, as it has done fairly regularly this summer.

Some members of the animal world use bright colouring to signal danger to wood-be predators, a biological feature called aposetism. With this in mind, I’m using bright colours as a kind of warning about the dangerous virus that has enveloped our world in the past year. I’m continuing the Pandemic Pattern series with #4, below, for which I have a specific title in mind, but with many hours of working time still ahead, I have time for something even better to come to mind as I stitch on. I’m well supplied with audiobooks through my kindle and sometimes listen to music.

Shining brightly on the table are the cones of neon thread I’m hand stitching with. These are topstitching weight, synthetic (nylon or polyester) and too strong for me to break by hand. I hand cut mostly red leather circles which are mostly appliqued in green, but occasional colour changes in leather and thread represent the variants popping up almost weekly around the world.

When I’d covered perhaps 1/4 of the background, it became obvious I’d need more neon green or the piece would have to be far smaller. I went to the internet and found some cones pictured of similar sounding thread in neon green, neon yellow and orange/red. On the order form I checked one of each colour, and then thinking how fast I was ploughing through the green, added an extra of that just to be sure I had enough. When the package arrived a few weeks later, I was a bit surprised to find each cone carried not 300m but 1500m! 6000m or 6km of neon topstitching thread will last me quite a while!

I estimate that the fabric scraps selection, cutting, bonding and topstitching has taken at least an hour for each of the 24 landscapes. From here there is probably another hour’s work on each one, hand drawing certain motifs and patterns, and what I’ve decided to do about the edges. It’s conceivable I might mess at least one up and need to replace that segment …

So for the next couple of days I’ll be thinking about the necessary quilting, and how I’m going to treat the border of the quilt. I’m about 1/3 way through an absorbing book, Isobel Wilkerson’s “Caste: the Origins of Our Discontents” on how concepts of caste and racism in the USA stretch right back to the earliest colonists. Just as well it’s long, I have hours to go.

Since starting afresh with my Aussie landscapes, in the last three days I’ve spent many hours bonding fiddly little segments of 24 little landscapes into place on their black background. (The stitching is a temporary guide to placement in the grid layout.) Each landscape is approx 7cm x 7cm, and tweezers and patience were absolutely essential! This morning I’ll start stitching them all down before moving to the next stage of hand drawn details.

With a black background, I’m no longer sure that “Girt By Sea” is an appropriate title. Of course, I might end up bonding or stitching something watery on the black, so that’s still a possibility, but all depends on how it goes from here.

I generally mull over title possibilities as I work. I know what I want my art to say, and believe a good title is the only statement a piece needs. I haven’t looked at the entry form yet, but there’s probably a required statement, which is never a bother for me. So I’ve begun a list of other possible titles, so far noting words and phrases from certain Dorothy MacKellar and Caroline J Carleton poems. I’m sure I’ll know the perfect one when I see it beside the completed work.