May TIF - Lace 3

The third piece of 'lace' was very charming but I could not envisage a way to stitch it effectively. This prevented me from progressing until I accepted that my intention to interpret the lace in my own style rather than produce an exact copy. On the original, the lace covers two thirds of the pink fabric and this segment is very lightly embellished. I decided to use a technique that I learnt on my Phase II Japanese embroidery – Suehiro. The technique is called flax leaf effect (asanoha-gake). First a grid of lines is stitched at three different angles to form a design of equilateral triangles. I used a single strand of the same DMC floss that I used for the foundation.


The grid is used to form the six-pointed stars that represent the flax leaf. A stitch similar to fly stitch is made into each triangle, with six stitches radiating from the same point to form a hexagonal design. I stitched some of the design in white to represent the area covered by lace and the remaining third in the same colour as the foundation stitches. As before, these stitches are as much to stabilise the foundation as to add interest and texture to this segment.


This is how the block looks with all the 'lace' stitched.


I really like that each piece of 'lace' has a totally different texture and weight to it.

Happy Stitching