Sunday 27 September 2009

Getting my Hand In

My instinct was to start with her face, after all if I can't get the face right, there is no point doing the rest, right?

Well, I have been so obsessed with beads lately, that I have done very little silk embroidery and I felt that it was important to 'get my hand in' before I tackled the focal point of the design.

My plan is to spend an hour each morning stitching GwaPE. This week I didn't manage to meet that target but I did do a little stitching every morning and have made a start.

I'm still not sure of what techniques I am going to use but no more prevaricating, I'm going to get on with it.

Day 1, 40 minutes

Most of this time was spent collecting together my threads and searching through a book for information on a technique that I wanted to try. Helen M Stevens creates a shadow line by using a row of stem stitch in black under the main stitches. Were the light hits the left hand side of the turban I outlined with white to create a highlight. I also stitched along bottom edge with blue. I'm hoping that this will give me a crisp line between the turban and the face.


Day 2, 40 minutes

I started stitching with a single strand of silk but as soon as I had laid three stitches I could see that this would not give sufficient coverage. I started again with two strands which gave me the coverage that I wanted.


Day 3, 20 minutes

In Japanese embroidery it is usual to leave one point open space between elements so I began that way but did not like the obvious black line this left. I removed that a restitched it slightly overlapping my stitches. This creates a slight split in the silk through which the black fabric is visible but this is far less obtrusive.


Day 4, 20 minutes


Day 5, 40 minutes



8 hours 40

Happy Stitching

2 comments:

Sue said...

Do you go to work if not why aren't you here Love from all Bournemouth Sue XX

Walden said...

Beautiful!