More on the Golden Accessories (honeysuckle)

So, where had we got to…?

Ah, yes. Spiral trellis stitch in silk for the centre of the honeysuckle flower, and then the outermost narrow band of the strapwork in gold reverse chain stitch. Straightforward enough, you’d say.

Well, yes, but I’m out of practice with gold threads and these sort of stitches, and the whole thing involved more contortions than I thought possible. There are also , I think, a few places where I had to undo and re-do the green background, where I haven’t tidied up the back or held fast the stitches quite as well as I should have done. We’ll see how the whole thing survives…!

The next was gold thread again, and Ceylon Stitch. There’s only space for two columns of the “chain stitch” effect in each strap, so everything is quite tight and compressed.

I’m struggling quite a bit with the Japanese needle and the fragile gold thread here. I’m sure I became more at ease with it when I was doing more of the Tudor and Stuart style, so I’m going to just continue. From any reasonable viewing distance, the breaks shouldn’t be obvious, and in truth, at this point, I just want these finished and added to the heap in the parlour dome!

Finally, the strapwork is completed with plaited braid stitch in silver. And if I’ve said the gold was fragile, the silver was even more so – as in fact I commented, a decade or so. As I said, my suspicion is that this relates to atmospheric conditions while the thread was being made. It’s not helped by the fact that, even after a few inches of revision stitching, Plaited Braid Stitch has left my muscle memory and every twist and turn was hard-won.

I still like the look of it, though!