Somebody asked about this in RCTN, so here is the piece of work. I've always been interested in Celtic art, being a Celt myself. By the way, I'm Welsh, not Irish.
I was on holiday in Ireland and found a book called 'How to draw Celtic Key Patterns' (ISBN 0-7137-2652-0), by Andy Sloss. Andy actually charts some of the patterns at the back of the book. There are several different varieties of key patterns which you can use. My next effort will be one with holes in the middle, but the resultant design can be rather large.
To see the work in detail click on the little thumbnail. The larger picture is about 56k, if you want to download it. The piece is worked in tent stitch on a plain grey sweatshirt - quite hard to find these days. The fibre used is a single strand of Caron Watercolour in Jade. I used twelve count waste canvas. I'm sorry about the inaccurate scanning - anybody who has tried to scan a sweatshirt will probably understand!
The stitching is disappointingly uneven - I think this was the result of pulling out the threads with the waste canvas. Also, for me, the choice of colour is slightly unfortunate as it does not stand out enough against the grey. I've worn the sweatshirt several times with this pattern on it and it looks quite smart. Perhaps a bright colour would just have looked common!
Robert Tusler
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