Mary Wigham by Katia in France

Another beautiful interpretation in the making, this time by Katia in France. I find that palette of browns and blues so assured and so calming. Look at the small geometric motif placed between the brown and partly finished blue medallions on the top row. Katia has taken a monochrome motif and rendered it in polychrome shades. It is a personal cadenza. Maybe, even if we are following the pattern quite strictly, we might take a little leap and put in one element that is truly our own. I am always asked by dealers and historians why anyone would ever want to stitch a replica. So, I sit them down to dinner and ask how they learnt to cook. Did they have the early panache to toss things in a pan, wave a magic wand and deliver perfection on a plate? Well, no, actually. Guess what? They learnt from a cook book, just like me, assiduously replicating each instruction. And over the years I learnt to season, to balance ingredients, and developed a taste and eye so that now in later life I can go to an almost empty fridge and conjure up something that can be startlingly good. Stitching replicas and taking time to understand the colours, the balance, the harmony of placement is a wonderful way to develop sensitivity and art in stitching. From stitching strict replicas we move on, we change the palette of colours for a mix that is more in tune with our taste; we change the placements slightly; we correct asymmetries or create new ones (sometimes by accident) of our own. We are on the way to becoming a designer in our own right. But more, much more than that, by stitching a replica we have followed the map of a living human hand and heart and, for a while, traced something of their life with our thread. That is why I want to stitch replicas. How about you?