Starting the Pansy (Golden Accessories)

To begin with, the Pansy design of the Golden Accessories went much better than I feared.

In some lights the colours of the pansy are much closter than in others, making progress quite slow until I worked out which combination of lighting to use. But the petal shapes are simple enough, and although the weave is fine enough that I keep mistrusting my counting, I am also reminding myself that it doesn’t actually matter too much if the patterning on the petals aren’t exactly as charted. I shan’t be showing people the chart when I show them the pieces, and besides, if they go in the parlour dome, it’s fair to assume any onlookers will be too dazzled to pick up any oddities!

I’ve also learnt from last time.

Last time, I tried to outline the strapwork sections with tacking stitches, so that I could stitch without counting. That didn’t work – I actually misplaced the tacking stitches and had to count anyway. Grrr.

So, this time, I counted out from one point, and then followed the chart to outline, in one row of tent stitch, all the internal edges of the strapwork, and then went back to fill in the gap.

Well, that worked pretty well so it seemed reasonable to assume I could do something similar for the outside.

Which I could – except, do you see the card with the silk wrapped around it?

When I got to the point I pictured, I had got down to just that bit left, and was contemplating switching to half cross stitch, which has neither coverage nor any real cohesion, in a forlorn attempt not to run out.

Then I looked in the project box and discovered I have an entire reel as yet unstarted!

Phew.

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!

Found and to be finished

Very long term readers may recall that over a decade ago, I was working on some additional designs from the Tudor and Stuart Goldwork course, became thoroughly fed up with them, and shoved them in a dark corner until my good temper returned.

It’s taken a while…

Anyway, I’ve found them again, and while the Parterre Knotwork is being difficult, the Amarna finish-work is being difficult, and Aethelflaed is being difficult, I thought I would see whether my good temper had returned, and I could get them finished.

The Acorn was completed – some time in 2012, apparently, and I’d started on the tent stitch for the Honeysuckle, and found myself with some miscounting and unpicking, which I think may have contributed to the loss of temper.

So the first thing to do was to finish all that tiny dark green tent stitch. In fact what you see here was some considerable way into the process – almost all the right side outside the strapwork gaps is new – but with my new-since-I-started working light with magnifier, and my working spectacles, it actually went rather better than a decade ago.

The first addition was silk Spiral Trellis for the centre of the flower – I enjoyed that, even though it’s so tiny. So now I can start on the gold and silver strapwork!

First up is reverse chain stitch, which was a relatively easy way in. I like the stitch, and find it useful, so it’s familiar. The round-eyed Japanese needles are less so, and I struggle to thread them, but they were such a feature of the Online University courses that I feel I should persevere with them.