Kimberly Servello's Embroidery Blog

Kimberly Servello - Pattern Drawer and Embroideress

Friday, April 26, 2013

The Bluebird's Sunflower

 I'm not quite finished with the green area, but what remains to be done needs a couching thread that I don't have yet.

So on to the yellow section.  I decided to work the sunflower "seeds" in Spiral Trellis.  It's one of my favorite Elizabethan stitches. I also thought it would be different than the French knots which you'd expect to see.  (These "seeds" are quite small and could be covered with French knots. I enlarged them somewhat in order to work in ST.)
The right seed is done in Soie d'Alger; the left in 100/3.  I don't care for Soie d'Alger thread because it's fuzzy and I lose clarity in the stitch, but it's what came in the thread pack.  I tried the 100/3 from my own stash.  The problem is the yellow isn't deep enough and I can't buy the brighter yellow in 100/3 in time for this project.  

The seeds are so small (3/32" in diameter) that it's probably a moot point anyway.  I can see the difference in clarity under magnification, as in these photos.  But with the naked eye you really can't.  It just irks me to stitch second-best seeds.  The color is more important here - Love the way it pops.

3 comments:

  1. The seeds do look fantastic, and using spiral trellis instead of french knots creates an entirely different texture!

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    1. I thought about filling in the whole center with one large Spiral Trellis "round". It would look very much like the texture of a sunflower center. The problem was that there is also a half sunflower along the edge of this area and it wouldn't be possible to stitch half a ST 'round'.

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  2. Hi Kim,
    A while ago you talked about using pins to dress a large fabric on the slate frame. Did Nicola mention what type of pins to use? Also, did she say that one could use this technique on any type of fabric (e.g. linen?) and if so should one apply tape to the edges of the linen and then pin the tape to prevent holes?
    Thanks

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