Saturday 25 June 2011

Floral Glove, Putting on the Glitz

With all of silk embroidery complete I am able to move onto the gold work. I mentioned that one reason I wanted to do this course was to work on my long and short stitch but by far the biggest reason was the gold work.

Gold work is really appealing to me. I find the techniques fascinating, and am looking forward to learning some of them on this sampler, but it is the yummy materials that really attract me.

The first step of the gold work is to outline all the flowers and leaves with Elizabethan Twist. The 2-ply twisted gold thread is couched around the edge of the embroidery. I wound the twist onto a koma; I find it much easier to handle metallic threads this way.

© Thistle Threads/Carol-Anne Conway

For the rose, every row of petals is outlined. As Rachel commented, the one point open space comes in very useful when positioning the Elizabethan Twist between the rows. Things got a bit messy with all of the tails on top but it is best to do all of the couching in one area before sinking them. The thread does catch on the loose ends but it would catch far more if they were on the back were you can’t see what is happening.

© Thistle Threads/Carol-Anne Conway

I am amazed how different this little flower looks just from outlining in gold.

© Thistle Threads/Carol-Anne Conway

Happy Stitching

6 comments:

Isabelle said...

Yor flowers are so gorgeous and adding a golden outline to the flowers gives them a magical look : thanks so much for sharing your beauties with us :-)
Have a nice week-end,
Isa

Mary Corbet said...

It's coming along so nicely, Carol-Anne! I have yet to finish mine... Some day? I hate to admit that I've been using some of the supplies in other projects! :-)

zetor said...

That looks beautiful.Outlining in gold really brings out the colours.

Jeannine 520 said...

What a difference, so pretty!

Rachel said...

It is amazing, isn't it, what a different the gold thread makes.

Susan Elliott said...

It's beautious!!! But all those threads on top would drive me (&$&(@#!