underatopazsky posted: " Well, the lonely courgette now has some friends and as they are almost big enough to be called marrows, I left the flowers off. I used the same interfacing backed painted cotton for the leaves as I did for the original stumpwork garden and the sa" Under A Topaz Sky
Well, the lonely courgette now has some friends and as they are almost big enough to be called marrows, I left the flowers off.
I used the same interfacing backed painted cotton for the leaves as I did for the original stumpwork garden and the same method, which has scaled up very satisfactorily.
Next, I added big blowsy cabbages in a 1cm wide bluey-green silk ribbon. I made sure I worked the woven spider's web stitches nice and loosely and let the ribbon twist and bend to give a more natural look to the leaves.
Lastly, a patch of radishes. As this garden is about three times the size of the original I needed to enlarge the original tiny line of detached chain stitch pairs. This time I gave the radishes at least four leaves each and increased the weight of the leaves by using a thicker thread and nesting one detached chain stitch inside another. I gave each one a little pink base to the leaf stalk to hint at the crunchy pink radish growing just under the surface.
To give an idea of how much bigger I'm working, here is the garden so far side by side with the original version. The hoop is 6 inches in diameter - this is practically enormous for me!
As it's the end of the month, time for the update on May's Move It On Project. Unfortunately I didn't get as far as I had hoped with the Casalguidi work, although for a nice reason this time. Last week was half term, so we've had a lovely family holiday in Northumberland and all the stitching I did was to go in my holiday journal. But the overcast trailing is finished and more importantly, I have a book I can use for the flowers when I pick it up again.
June's Move It On project is well out of my comfort zone. I've seen and admired a lot of Ruskin Lace during our holidays in the Lake District and for our holiday in 2015 I created a very ambitious altered book/holiday journal which I still haven't finished! One of the things I wanted to stitch for it was a Ruskin lace sample.
I bought myself a Ruskin Lace book but after reading the first chapter, I bottled out big time. I hate the thought of cutting, withdrawing and weaving threads back into a piece of stitching and these are core skills for this type of embroidery. But I also hate the thought that it's getting the better of me and recently managed to get as far as hemming a piece of linen following the instructions in the book before I gave up again. I'm determined to move the 2015 journal on and I'm hoping that once I've got my head round the cutting threads bit, the needlelace element should be more enjoyable.
This is where I am at the moment, cutting threads to form an internal border.
I'm using some of the linen I usually use for pulled thread work and am a bit worried that it's going to be too open, but that's what the Move It On Project is designed for. If it works, then that's great - if it doesn't, I'll have learned useful lessons. Fingers crossed.
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