Firstly, the bonus!

This is a card that I found tucked away. I don’t know where or how I got it – just that it was before I was into embroidery!

It’s advertising an exhibition back in 2005, called “Everlasting – The Flower in Fashion and Textiles”.

Given that flowers are my favourite embroidery motifs, how I would love to go the exhibition now!

It says that the card is an English coverlet, c1700, silk, silk thread, gilt thread.

I haven’t seen anything like it before. All metal flowers, yes. Flowers edged in metal thread, yes. Never satin stitched metal thread mixed in with silk thread as if it were silk.

The stems are satin stitched in gold metal thread.

In the red flower, 2 petals are entirely gilt satin stitched, and the innards of the rest of the petals. It’s centre looks like thick silk, tightly curled then partly unwound, and then couched down.

The blue flower is edged in gold stitches on the edges of each of the two ‘layers’ of the flower. It’s centre looks like stretched gold purl, possibly padded.

The buds and leaves all have satin stitched gold thread at their edges. (It looks black or silver in the scan as well as looking like actual gold in more heavily stitched areas – my camera->computer connection is playing up so I had to scan it, loosing the reflection of the gilt thread).

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That would do for a blog post on it’s own, but at 3.30am this morning, I had an idea.

I just wasn’t happy with my approach to split stitching the butterfly wing, dividing it into areas to give it texture, rather than using the longest stitches possible.

(Here’s a photo of part of it as a reminder):

If I did it again, I’d use the longest stitches possible, but I’d still be stuck with split stitches between the wing pad channels, because they are so narrow and I have 3 colours to fit into each one)

Anyway, I thought – what if I outlined the edges of the split-stitched areas? To make it look like there are veins all over the wing?

Like this :

It means that I loose the blended effect where two colours meet, but I think that it looks more ‘put together’.

I used the same thin copper metallic thread that I’d used on the wing pad veins. In this case, scanning the piece meant the copper thread really lit up – it’s not quite so obvious in real life. (Please send prayers to my camera!)

There are two types of copper/gold metal thread to go on the wing yet, so hopefully that will pull it together even more.

I did these ‘veins’ in backstitch. Couching down the copper thread would have been far preferable, giving much smoother lines, but the pain in my hands wasn’t up to holding down a light, flighty thread in an exact place then stitching it down with the other through the existing split stitches.

I’ve just been on a spending spree at a fabric shop on Etsy – a selection of 18”x24” for only $3.50USD each – tho they are coming from India, so I do hope they arrive sometime this side of Christmas.

This is for the Main Background, where the entire piece will end up attached to. (Remembering that blue/purple background I’ve got at the moment will all be covered up by split stitching).

Since telling colours on a monitor is so hard, and I use so much dupion anyway, I got a selection.

One of these just has to go with the coral/copper coloured threads in the wing. Or I shall be very annoyed. The intensely emerald green dupion I have stacks of goes with it, but I don’t want an emerald green background. I want something more neutral.

I also picked up a bright orange dupion for the backing of part of the butterfly – but I’ll talk about that when I get to it *grin* (Julie is reading these entries, so I’m not revealing any more that I have to as I go along…..)