The beginning

First posted on FB on 20th October 2019

New project underway for the end of the International Year of the Periodic Table. I’ve always wanted to have a go at blackwork, and with all the lovely colourful periodic tables around, I thought it would be nice to take it back to its original monochrome. When finished, it will have 118 different patterns, some with meaning, others random.

So far, Iridium (Iris, goddess of the rainbow), Roentgenium (Roentgen, discoverer of X rays), Carbon (graphene) and Oxygen (Dalton’s open circle symbol).

You may be used to seeing a periodic table with two rows hanging below the rest, so that it fits on an A4 page. As I don’t have those constraints with fabric, I decided to go long-form.
And if you count, you will see that there are currently only 116 squares – that’s because IUPAC haven’t yet ruled on which elements constitute group 3 (Sc, Y, La and Ac, or Sc, Y, Lu, and Lr) so I’m hedging my bets over where to place the last two squares.
#IYPT2019