Stitching The Persian Fantasy – Three

I tried very hard to get a photo that does  justice to the waterfall here, because it is another example of what I mentioned when I was discussing the gazelle, but I’ve not succeeded very well, I’m afraid.

The interesting point about the waterfall is that it looks like a trivial piece of design – just a few lines – and yet when I came to embroider it, I realised that it would be spoilt if I added “watery” effects with sparkling thread or metallics. I ended up stitching it very simply in stem stitch, using three colours of pearl cotton.

In real life (I wish I were better at photography!) this looks more like a waterfall than a few simple lines have any right to. I’ve looked at this panel over breakfast for ten years now, and I still can’t work out quite how the designer managed to do it!

This tree is a different matter. It doesn’t look much like a real tree, and it isn’t intended to. It is a purely decorative, “tree-ish” element of the design.

I’m coming to realise that the success of these panels rests partly on this balancing act, in which some of the elements look more realistic than others.

Something for us all to try, perhaps!

Stitching the Persian Fantasy – Two

I enjoyed working on the prince’s picnic on panel four. The tall carafe is created using a variegated knitted ribbon (from Stef Francis), and has been used as if appliquéd. The inspiration here was those strange lustre-glazes that show widely differing colours in different lights, and I had great fun choosing particular sections of the yarn to create the effect. The blue jug is much more homespun (sorry – couldn’t resist!), using a Soft Cotton, this time inspired by coiled clay pots – a technique I remembered trying at school, although it was much easier in embroidery! Then there was the loaf of bread, using three shades of a plain matte, round cotton yarn, and the rug (or table – I’m not sure which) bordered with a complex border stitch in a strongly textured yarn.

The bark of the flowering tree on Panel Three was worked using various bouclé and other effect yarns, couched to the surface randomly. The basic design is so stylised that I was careful not to be naturalistic. I used a variety of yarns from a Texere Yarns Inspirations pack and caught them down with a single strand of stranded cotton, in loops and wavy lines. The flowers and leaves were working in plain stranded cottons. The flowering tree was already so dominant in the panel that it really didn’t need much in the way of emphasis from the yarns other than the bark. The tall grasses at the foot of the tree are in stranded cotton too, using feather stitch. I’m not sure that I would do this panel in the same way now, although I think that using satin stitch and long and short stitch, as in the original, might make it look a little serious, rather than decorative and fun.

And I wanted it to be fun.

Stitching the Persian Fantasy – One

I’m glad to say that stitching the Persian Fantasy screen was just as much fun as I hoped it would be! I didn’t follow the instructions in the magazine, not least because it called for “Anchor Flox” , and no-one I could find even knew what that was!  I’ve since discovered that it was a very shiny thread, something like a pearl cotton, but made of rayon. I was going to stick with a single type of thread, and conventional stitches, but my mother suggested that I should Be More Adventurous, so I was.  I have been grateful to her ever since, as I had enormous fun playing with the threads and stitches.

The four panels show

1. the hero out hunting,
2. a gazelle in front of a waterfall, perhaps the object of his hunt,
3. a flowering tree, and
4. the hero again laying out a well-deserved picnic to share with his lady who so far has not appeared.

It is very stylised, very Thirties, but clearly inspired by early Oriental silk paintings. I have a couple of modern ones in a similar style, in fact – inherited from Grandmama, along with the lacquer box!

My knowledge of horses is limited to the direction in which they are going, but I remembered hearing from my horse-mad cousin that horses can get pretty shaggy, and that the lovely glossy look you see on a racehorse is due partly to the horse having had a good haircut. So when I came to do the prince’s steed on the first panel, although I didn’t want him glossy (I wanted the Prince to be glossy), I did want him to look cropped rather than shaggy. So I chose tapestry wool and brick stitch, slightly bent to follow the direction of the coat. I gave him a darkly staring, focused eye, like a warhorse on the Bayeux Tapestry, and matched his reins to the Prince’s clothes, using two colours of Anchor pearl cotton, matching the two colours of Anchor Marlitt rayon thread, twisted together to create cords. The fringe on the headpiece was created using twisted single lengths of pearl cotton, the raw ends plunged and the twisted cords hanging free. I’m still pleased with the horse, and I don’t think I would do him differently now.

The running gazelle on the second panel makes a very good contrast with the Prince’s horse. She was worked using long and short stitch in Paterna crewel wool, with some mixing of colours in the needle, and I quite explicitly aimed for a slightly ragged look around the haunches, although in keeping with the very stylised feel of the whole design, I worked a neat, careful, dark outline of stem stitch. I particularly like the way the designer has made her very clearly a design, not an animal portrait, but at the same time, the single lines for the lower legs are so very reminiscent of the fragile-looking legs of gazelles and other deer.

The Prince’s bow is worked using Braid Stitch, using a mercerised variegated cotton. Archaeological and historical records show that the ancient bows could be very highly decorated while still retaining all their power as a weapon, and I was thinking of descriptions I had read (archaeology is another interest of mine) of bows using horns as the ends, and laminated wood (lamination was invented earlier than you might think) for the main section, all decorated with gold wire inlay. Naturally, all you can see on the embroidered bow is the inlay!