When I asked what my In The Stitch Zone students wanted to cover in the summer session, one of the things that came up was contemporary cutwork. So I started to research the topic, which is a lot more complex than I first thought, with all sorts of variables to consider from whether to oversew or buttonhole stitch the outlines to whether you pierce the fabric first or remove it later. This left me with a fair amount of room to manoeuvre so I decided to work a sample first and see what I could learn from the process.
I had an idea to use a simple leaf/flame shape and created three initial designs which utilised it in different ways. The first one was a spray of leaves. I'm a big fan of outlining satin stitch before you start and as I'd seen examples which showed outlines for the cutwork worked in running stitch, I decided to go with that.
So far, so good. I decided to use blanket stitch rather than oversewing as I feel the looped part of the stitch gives a neater edge. But I didn't think about how I was going to manage those tight points...
Curves are a bit of a challenge as you have to make the distance between the stitches wider on the outside of the curves than the inner without there being appreciable gaps but tight points are a lot trickier. As you can see from the image below, I did a lot of learning on the job and some of the stitching does not bear close inspection!
However, eventually I realised that it was best to start from the point and ended up with ten reasonably neat leaves. I added the branch/twig by oversewing a bundle of three full strands of six-stranded cotton which I then split to nine strands when the twig divided.
Lastly the cutting, with a steady hand and a pair of very sharp scissors. There are some flecks where you can still see the last vestiges of the fabric, but it's pretty much impossible to cut it completely away. If I was really bothered I'd touch it up with some Inktense, but I'm pretty happy with the result.
I'm planning to back it with this unusual Japanese silk crepe.
It's certainly cutwork and I think it looks pretty contemporary too but the demands of constantly adjusting the angle and placing of your stitches to work round corners and points makes it perhaps a little tricky for beginners. Time for a new design.
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