There is one piece in ‘Twixt Art and Nature that I really love.

It’s stumpwork – Mirror with Jael and Barak, English, 1672.

To highlight the interesting pieces of stumpwork -

A pansy with raised top petals and a background ‘shadow’ on the ground

two layers for the tail(one made with a real peacock feather, the base looks like it’s been done in gold thread)

Can you see how each pomengranite is ‘double edged’ along the edge of the fruit, with a second layer sitting on top and joining at the centre?

This last has an entire 3D ball of a seedpod above it’s “shadow” on the ground.

------------------------------

Now, going back to

http://mfa.org/collections/search_art.asp?recview=true&id=118608&coll_keywords=60.560&coll_accession=&coll_name=&coll_artist=&coll_place=&coll_medium=&coll_culture=&coll_classification=&coll_credit=&coll_provenance=&coll_location=&coll_has_images=&coll_on_view=&coll_sort=0&coll_sort_order=0&coll_view=0&coll_package=0&coll_start=1
Or go to http://mfa.org and search the collections on accession number 60.560
"Back of an embroidered bodice
English, About 1600,

from Lady Genevieve,

which I mentioned in http://elmsleyrose.blogspot.com/2009/03/historical-sampler-primrose-as-gift.html

on close up, I noticed something weird about the stitching.

It appears to have, for some motifs, small horizontal stitches, more like something I’d expect to see on canvas than linen.

I had a look through my canvas stitch notes but couldn’t find a particular stitch to match, so just satin stitch?

I’ve done one of these leaves for myself

with 3 strands of DMC thread.

(click for bigger picture - you know, you can't click for bigger pictures in Windows LiveWriter, which I prefer to write blog entries in - much better formatting images. Have to use the blogger itself if I want to show bigger images. Annoying)

I really like it’s textural quality.

I actually did tent stitch, because the leaf was drawn at 45 degrees to the warp/weft and I didn’t want to end up in difficulties on the points of the leaf.

Here’s a honeysuckle from the piece, done the same way