Conservation Stitching - day 1
Today is Week four at the Centre for Textile Conservation where I am currently undertaking my MPhil in Textile conservation. I had to hobble into class, (my usually 15 minute walk turned into an hour as I sprained my ankle over the weekend) but I desperately wanted to go in so I could see how stitching should be done and get immediate feedback on anything I was doing and ask questions. Today was my first day experimenting with couching stitch on a damaged object. We were given small squares of a blue and white squared material (something similar to a dishcloth) with multiple holes it it. I started off by mapping out my stitching plan on a piece of Melinex which I placed on top of the object. I learnt the stitching usually starts from the middle of the textile and you move outwards. An interesting point was made by Sarah which was how I had to decided whether I should merge two of my couching stitches into one as some of my holes were quite close to each other. However ...
