Silver Gift Bag

This is a project that I am currently working on. When finished it will be a gift bag. It is my entry for a competition the my branch of the Embroiderer's Guild is holding at our December meeting. The background is merino wool and silk throwsters waste that I felted onto muslin. The silk does not show up well because I put too much wool on top of it but it broke up the grey to give a mottled effect.

Last year, I bought a new sewing machine because I would like to do more machine embroidery, but so far I haven’t done much. I thought this would be a good opportunity to practice vermicelli, a stitch that I have not had much success with so far. Unfortunately I choose to use a metallic Madeira 40 thread which broke very easily. I snapped so frequently that I nearly gave up all together but sheer bloody mindedness drove me to finish what I had started. In the end I was quite pleased with the sparkle that it added to the background. After that I decided to give myself a break and let the machine do some of the work. I tried out some of the built in decorative stitches in silver metallic and white rayon Madeira 40. My plan was to break the background into random areas like the crazy quilts that I had recently discovered on the internet. I then created some more ‘seams’ in by hand using various threads from an “Oliver Twists” assortment in neutral colours.

Finally, I added some embellishment. I was really inspired by some silk ribbon embroideries that I had seen on the web and wanted to try some for myself. I found the instructions for this poinsettia on the web. For the characters, which I think say ‘Peace’, I used fly stitch and ribbon stitch. I used some mother of pearl buttons and a variety of beads to create two clusters in areas that looked a little bare.

Hopefully, I will make up the bag this evening.

Happy Stitching