Queen of Flowers - leaves

I elected to do the flowers in white so all of the colour in this piece comes from the foliage and stems. While I am not very confident with colour, I had a very clear vision of what I hoped to achieve with the foliage. For this to work, I needed to visualize the light source, where the sun would fall on the leaves and where would be in shadow. For those parts that were clearly in shadow, I used the deepest bluey green for the foundation. Where I imagined the sun would fall on the leaf, I used the lightest yellowy green. And in between, I used a mid-green.

© JEC/Carol-Anne Conway

The fall of sunlight is further enhanced by a technique called 'striking effect' whereby a gold thread is placed above the silk foundation before the couching threads are applied.

© JEC/Carol-Anne Conway

The couching stitches can be the same colour as the foundation to enrich the colour or they can be in a different hue to start blending the foundation stitches.

© JEC/Carol-Anne Conway

Sometimes I used the highlight and lowlight colours to blend into the mid-tones to strengthen the shadows and highlights. Sometimes I used a mid-tone to tone down the shadows and highlights. This blending is most effective when using diagonal couching.

© JEC/Carol-Anne Conway

While the shading is the fun part, the leaves really come to life when the veins are added.

© JEC/Carol-Anne Conway

With this area completed, I was ready to move onto the part that excited me the most – the main flower.

Happy Stitching