Tag: stitches
The Autumn Leaves Skirt
Autumn Leaves Skirt
I made this skirt last winter, and originally needlefelted the leaves onto the fabric. However, after a winter’s wear, and after looking at a good few blogs over the summer, I thought I could do better.
I took some ideas from some of SharonB’s Pintangle posts on seam treatments, fished some additional inspiration from a host of other blogs (wish I’d taken notes, now – I want to find some of them again!) and then proceeded to some adventures in embellishment.
It occurred to me that there was no need to keep within the leaf shapes, or even to add embellishment that resembled leaf characteristics in any way, so paisley shapes, spiders web wheels and trailing lines of feather stitch showed up all over the place.
I started off by sewing around the edges of all the leaf shapes in ordinary running stitch, and originally I had intended to stop there. However, when I did, it looked a little half-hearted, and I’m never that, so Something Had To Be Done!
First Skirt Detail
There’s a trail of French knots across the largest leaf, which has a circle of Rosette Chain on it, surrounding a disc of an interlaced filling stitch in three different colours.
I also realised (about halfway through!) that I didn’t have to keep the embellishment only on the applied fabric, so the skirt fabric acquired stem stitch lines with French knot finials, a spiders web wheel, and more French knots.
Second Skirt Detail
It is all worked in six strands of stranded cotton, un-separated to maintain a sort of cohesion. I chose colours that were fairly close to the colours of the felt leaf shapes, but working in the opposite direction, as it were, so dark felt was running-stitched in light stranded cotton.
All this on a skirt I originally made purely because I wanted a long winter skirt to cut the draughts in the office!
Stitching the Persian Fantasy – Four
There was so much going on that I consciously reused yarns, colours or stitches across the four panels in order to maintain some semblance of order. In fact as I moved on to each panel I would lay the completed ones side by side on the living room floor and scramble around putting piles of coloured threads on them. It must have looked highly comical, but my parents (I was still living with them when I embroidered these panels) were kind enough not to laugh. Besides, as long as it works…!
Crags worked in Caron Collection "Storm" (I think!)
I chose to use one of the Caron Collection threads for the basic outlines of the closer landscape, using Up and Down Blanket Stitch, my favourite blanket stitch variation. I’ve done a bit of hunting because it’s one of the more obscure variations and finally found it at the bottom of Sharon B’s Stitch Dictionary page on blanket stitch variations. For the further landscape or clouds (I never did quite work out what they were), I used a different colour range but the same stitch.
Some of the Cactus Plants
The cacti were worked in a variety of stitches, partly based on the lines of the original transfer, but then extrapolated as the stitches and threads suggested themselves. Although I did use several variegated threads in the flowers and the cacti, most of them are pearl-cotton types, and there is a certain unity provided by the use of the same set of threads wherever those forms appear. There are fly stitches, feather stitches, blanket stitches and sword stitches in this small section. I’ve diagrammed Sword Stitch at the end of this post.
Large flowers with leaves worked in Chained Feather Stitch
The leaves for the largest flowers were worked using chained feather stitch – I had never worked it before and thought it looked fun. I caught down the long connecting stitches with a single strand of cotton, and was delighted to realise that that gave me the effect of a shadowy vein – one of those serendipitous effects that one cannot foresee, but only rejoice in.
The large flowers had centres of Whipped Spiders Web stitch and the outlines were worked in Rosette Chain stitch. The stems were simply a very heavy rayon cord, couched in place. They may well have been the most straightforward element of the entire four panels!
Sword Edging, or Sword Stitch
I couldn’t find a diagram of Sword Stitch on the internet anywhere so I spent a bit of time with a vector drawing package and Barbara Snook’s “Embroidery Stitches”, published by Batsford in 1963. I’ve redrawn the diagrams, changing them slightly where I thought the original used a strange order. When working a row, she seems to recommend working from right to left. The only other advice she gives is that the longest arm should point downwards – clearly that is the blade of the sword.