Butterfly Challenge, Close up

Butterfly Challenge

The hand embroidery group that I’ve joined began a design challenge in April. The idea was that we all embroider the same design but interpret it in our own way. We could use any technique, style, materials and colour scheme; the only rule was that it should be predominantly hand embroidered. The design chosen by the group was a butterfly with flowers.


The body is satin stitched silk over two layers of cotton padding. For the antennae I made a Karayori twist from the very dark blue silk used for the body, together with a black metallic thread. I couched them in place with a single strand of the metallic thread.

The wings are embroidered with a Japanese stitch called Lattice Holding. First a foundation is worked in flat silk. The lattice is formed with a fine twist in the same shade and couched where the threads cross with a pale pink metallic thread. I made a Katayori twisted thread with the same silk and pale pink metallic to couch along the edge of the lattice area. I then outlined the whole of the wing with twisted silver using stem stitch and outline stitch.

The flowers are stitched in a selection of Mulberry silks and a little Thread Gatherers silk ribbon. I’ve used stem stitch and double detached chain stitch for the sprigs of leaves. Some of the flowers are chain stitch with colonial knots for the center. The silk ribbon flowers have a glass bead center. The remaining flowers were a personal challenge. I have never had much success with bullion knots but I wanted to work the remaining flowers in this stitch. I took a look at SharonB’s Stitch Dictionary before I attempted them to get a clear impression of how they should be worked. I am very pleased with my effort. I couple are a little loose but the others are perfectly respectable bullions. These little flowers have French knot centers.

Finally, I added a few gold seed beads.

I have really enjoyed this challenge. It has been great fun to see how others have decided to work the design.

All the designs completed so far can be seen here.

Happy Stitching

Valentine Themed Heart

A month or two ago the Hand Embroidery Group launched a valentine themed heart swap. I really would have liked to take part but knew that I would struggle to complete my heart in the time frame. I pieced a heart to see how much I could get done before signing up, but as I had thought, other commitments meant that I could not spend much time on this.

The print on the right and the small triangle of red in the middle are scraps from a dress I made 3 or 4 years ago. The dark red satin is from a bag of scraps I bought from a local dress maker.


When I have had some spare time I've gradually added a little more stitching to the heart. The poppy on the left is something that I did a couple of years ago with a theme pack of Mulberry Silks called, funnily enough, 'Poppy'. I knew that I had some of these thread left over and wanted to use some of them else where on the heart but it took me a long time to find them. Anyway, I eventually found them, eventually finished the stitching and tonight I finally finished the heart. A bit late for the the swap, but this is my first QC heart and another finished project.

Happy Stitching

Finished Silver Gift Bag

I've finished.

One of my biggest failings is not finishing a project. It helps if I have a goal or deadline, as I did with this bag. Monday evening I made a cord for the handles. The main cord is two shades of grey combined and then twisted into a cord. First I wrapped it with the silver and silk thread that I used in the embroidery in the same direction as the twist. Then I wrapped it in the opposite direction with a textured thread taken from the Olive Twist assortment. Last night I backed it, made up the bag and attached the cords. I positioned one of the button clusters too low and they don't sit nicely.

The Guild meeting is this evening. I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone else has done. There are some exciting textile artist in the group, including some very talented machine embroiderers, felt makers, weavers and one lady who specialises in freestyle lace-making. After the competition the bags will be auctioned to raise funds for the branch.

Happy Stitching

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