Hello tapestry friends! I have just returned from a wonderful trip to Guernsey in the Channel Islands and was delighted to be able to take my tapestry with me on the plane. When I say tapestry, I mean the canvas and wool, as well as the needle – and I took scissors and a tapestry frame too.
What a treat it is to be able to stitch on a plane again! If you have a fear of flying, then having a tapestry with you will give you something other than the flight to focus on and will help to calm your nerves.
On a long flight you might even start and finish a whole tapestry. Give it a go! Imagine stitching a Christmas or birthday present while on a flight, what a sense of achievement that would give you. Time very well spent!
I planned to do lots of walking and socialising in Guernsey so chose a small project that I knew I’d finish during my five days stay. I took Clover the Donkey beginner kit, clipped on to a 12″ tapestry frame. Together the canvas and frame fitted nicely into my 40L rucksack.
The tapestry frame also slotted snugly into the back of the seat in front of me. An 18″ frame would be fine too. The flight from Bristol is just under an hour and I like seeing the Guernsey coastline as the aeroplane approaches the island. It takes me back to my twenties when I’d return to Guernsey during my holiday breaks when I was studying textiles at art college in the UK.
My first day in Guernsey was gloriously sunny and I walked from Icart Point to Le Gouffre, stopping for a swim at Petit Bot. There were only two other people on the beach, it was wonderful.
The Guernsey cliffs are beautiful in May, with foxgloves, red campion, ox-eye daisies, cornflowers, sea thrift, bluebells, honeysuckle, wild garlic and my favourite – gorse bushes! I grabbed a handful of gorse and breathed in the sweet scent as soon the moment I got onto the first cliff path.
Another walk took me from Jerbourg to St. Peter Port, via Fermain Bay. There are lots of benches along the route, providing resting places as well as convenient spots for woolly folk to do a spot of tapestry.
TOP TIP: Advance planning! Before leaving my guesthouse in the morning, I cut some of my Anchor wool to 18″ lengths, so I didn’t have to faff about once I was settled in my stitching place.
Stitching while overlooking Fermain Bay was heavenly and I made good progress with my little donkey.
A donkey travelling with a donkey You may be wondering if there was a particular reason that I chose to take Clover the Donkey with me on my travels. Well, Channel Islanders will know that there most certainly was. Guernsey people are known as donkeys, while Jersey people are known as crapauds (toads)…and no, I don’t fancy designing a toad tapestry, but a frog would be nice!
When I designed Clover the Donkey, I had in mind that I wanted Guernsey people to be able to add a Guernsey flag somewhere in the design if they wanted to. The Guernsey flag is a white field with the red St. George’s cross and a smaller gold Norman cross within the red cross.
I was limited to eight colours in the design as we use eight skeins of Anchor wool in each of our beginner tapestry kits. Three of those colours had to be red, yellow and white for the Guernsey flag!
On my Guernsey holiday I set myself the task of incorporating the Guernsey flag in a straightforward way that anyone else could do if they wanted to. I had initially considered putting repeat patterns of the flag down the sides but risked running out of white wool if I did that. Instead, I decided to use the heart above the donkey as the centre of the flag, see picture below – it’s 7 stitches of yellow wool with two stitches running up and down from the centre.
From red heart to Guernsey flag, then rolled up for the flight home
The issue that then presented itself was how to get the whole flag in once the St.George’s cross was stitched around the Norman cross. If I made a complete rectangular flag shape, the bottom left corner would bump into the mane of the donkey. I opted instead to put an additional white cross around the red cross, to indicate a white field.
A tip for donkey stitchers who want a complete Guernsey flag If you want to include the whole Guernsey flag with a full rectangular white background above your donkey, start stitching your central cross further up the heart than I did.
You’ll need to add a few more rows of blue on either side and perhaps an extra row along the top, but there should be enough. I had plenty of blue left and I stitched Clover in tent stitch, which uses more wool than half cross stitch.
For balance, you could add an extra row or two of grass along the bottom. And to ‘square up’ the whole design if you don’t want it to be portrait format, just stitch stripes at the sides – or panels with yellow dots to represent our beloved gorse
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my tapestry travels. It’s something that I plan to do more of as I have the taste for it now! Please do send us pictures of your own travels with your tapestry as we’d love to see where your stitching takes you.
Happy stitching, and happy holidays!
Kelly
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Walking towards Le Gouffre, looking back towards Petit Bot and Icart
