I thought of painting the background but when my wonderful guild president offered me this material I decided to go with it, since I was recovering from a compression fracture of the spine & wasn’t back to shopping yet.    She also shared her stash of shells with me which conveniently came from a necklace & therefore were already for threading!  

But back to the beginning.  We were in the process of switching from a PC to a MacIntosh computer & our printer was not yet installed so starfish was enlarged by hand.  As soon as I saw him, I saw french knots but it was the composition with which I struggled.  Then driving home from a stitch-in I suddenly knew what I would do.  I have always wanted to stitch shells so I chose the ones from the picture that I really liked & that offered  variety in colour & texture. As well I have been intrigued by Helen Stevens’ embroideries so hauled out my books & decided to try this simple interpretation of water.  I decided if I didn’t like it I could always rip it out!  I used different sized needles for raising or lowering my french knots.  The shells were fun to interpret especially the smallest for which I used hand painted Japanese silk & loved the effect.  

Carol's starfish