Finally Finishing The Embroidery on Eve In The Garden of Eden

The Coiled Wrapped Silver Strip finishes off the metal thread frame for the cartouches beautifully. It fits between the rows of crinkle strip and pearl purl, and almost balances on top of the pearl purl, so it’s raised quite high.

And once the first cartouche frame is finished, there’s the second one to do!

Then, finally, the last stage before the adventure of turning it into a box is to add the gold webgimpe, which is a rather stiff woven ribbon.

I know it looks a bit twisted, but the next stage is to block it. Then I have to tackle the question of glue again. It will be a while before I tackle that challenge!

More Goldwork for Eve In The Garden Of Eden

The next stage in the goldwork cartouche frames for Eve in the Garden of Eden was to add a row of very fine gold pearl purl inside each double row of the crinkle strip. Now, this doesn’t need a stitch in every gap – it’s more like a very fine, very tight spring, and follows curves quite well – but it is quite fiddly and concentrated, and there’s rather a lot of it. Fortunately I did each cartouche individually, so I had a rest from pearl purl while I tackled the next stage….

Which was this!

The Silver Strip which was to be the central row of the cartouche frame arrived flat – or at least, loosely coiled in its box. In order to spring to life and create a gorgeous, opulent central row for the cartouche frame, it had to be coiled into a spiral around the second of the knitting needles that arrived with the kit.

One of the things I enjoy about Tricia’s courses is that sometimes our materials require further elaboration before we use them…

Here you can see the texture of the Wrapped Silver Strip. I think it is engraved or embossed, rather than actually wrapped, but it does add to the general variety of response to light, and that, after all, is part of the reason for having metal threads on an embroidered piece….

You can also see how the effect is enhanced by twisting the strip into a spiral!

Adding Goldwork to Eve in the Garden of Eden

Once the foliage and the snake were done, I could start on the goldwork.

First, the spine. Each gap between the polychrome panels was filled with three rows of metal threads. The middle one was silver wrapped around a gilt strip, and the two outer ones in each case were of a very fine check purl. This last was very fragile, and if I had realised in advance just how fragile, and how inclined to catch on cuffs, sleeves, and threads, I think I might have worked the spine last.

The goldwork around the cartouches began with four rows of Gilt Crinkle Strip, two couched around the outside of the frame, and two around the inside.

The instructions said to place a couching stitch in every valley of the crinkle, which was certainly necessary – it doesn’t willingly follow curves when it is couched flat – but I might not have thought to do without instruction. It makes for a wonderful effect, if rather visually confusing when you’re working it, because the hills and valleys of the crinkle strip bounce light every which way, in a rather delightfully dazzling fashion…

You might think, by the way, that this is fairly straightforward and done in no time at all. You’d be wrong! That Gilt Crinkle Strip looks lovely, but my word, it has a mind of its own, and being very springy and having lots of little corners to catch, it makes a spirited attempt to tie itself in knots. A third – and even fourth – hand might have helped!

Overcoming the difficulty

It took me quite some time – several weeks, in fact, before I got myself over my frustration with “Eve”, gathered up my patience and my courage, and had a go at the second lot of foliage.

The curls of gimp are a bit tighter, and more closely packed than in the first one, and the bunches of foliage are spaced out a bit to allow the branches to show through. There was a great deal of muttering, and I spread out the frustration by doing one clump at a time, then getting up and doing something else instead.

Naturally no garden of Eden can be complete without a Snake. In this case, using green silk pearl purl, carefully couched down in two sections to create the head (with flickering red silk forked tongue) and then the tail, to give the impression that the snake has wound itself around the tree.

I rather enjoyed the Snake (both of them!), because I only seemed to need the two hands I already have, rather than the three extra that seemed to be needed for the foliage! The silk thread used to couch the pearl purl also made a leaf for the apple.

And now I’m ready for the next stage…

Foliage for Eve In the Garden of Eden

I really should pay more attention to myself. I have said before that trying to work around edges is work for fools, and that often it is worth doing more stitching than is going to show. In the end I decided to listen to myself and do the whole sky.

If I’d done that before putting the trees in, however, the stitching would have been less fiddly and the experience, less frustrating!

The next stage is to add the foliage, more silk gimp couched with Soie Ovale, but this time couched in little curls.

I had been looking forward to this, as it looked rather entertaining in the photos, but thus far I haven’t enjoyed it at all. I’ve got myself tied in some terrible knots, and I’ve ended up cutting the gimp more often than I like.

I need to rethink how I tackle this, look again at the photos and instructions, and try to work out why I’ve ended up with something that looks congested and floppy, both at the same time. I also need to work out, if possible, how to hop from section to section, rather than cutting the gimp.