I found a new menu in one of my design programs so just had to have a go. Not as instinctive as drawing by pencil but very tidy when it came to mirroring and repeats.
Designed with a 'radial' option, the lines I drew were mirrored and repeated around an 8 section disc to make the design with 4 full repeats consisting of two mirrored eighths in each. Although this created a Cluny style pattern, (obviously very Muaiga), the practicalities of making it didn't quite work out as well as a hand drawn pattern this time.
A time consuming hand drawing uses the brain to see ahead, figuring out the joins and crossings of the threads and the handy speed of the program drawing lulls one into the false sense of security because it looks so very neat and tidy!
The printed design felt almost like someone else's pattern so I used my coloured pens to identify the trails and see how they worked out. I quite liked the coloured version so I set about winding all the matching threads using Empress, Sylco and Tanne. They all worked happily enough together and I had a few already wound, left over from previous projects.
Due to the variety of colours, there was no opportunity to run pairs out or through other trails and all the crossings had to be linked at the corners to keep the whole thing together. The choice of which colour to keep on top while I worked would make it the underneath colour once turned over, so I decided to spend time at the end sewing ends into tallies to make it double sided. It can show either side as a top side.
The choice of colour dramatically forces some trails to the fore, and to make again in white, or maybe ombre shades of one or two colours as they go into the center would give a very different look to this pattern.
