Progress on Nicola's Bluebird

 These photos were taken late Friday afternoon.  I finished the gold area and his head.  I still have one small motif in the green area to complete.  

Surprisingly, most of the accent stitches have been done with the filament thread only, called Accentuate - used to be called Madeira Supertwist, it has some metal in the composition, giving it a sheen.  I expected to use one strand of silk & one of filament. Every time I tried it I felt it was too heavy for what I was trying to do.

His legs are outlined with a couched #7 Tambour thread.  I tried stem stitch in silk.  I don't know why since I knew I wouldn't like it even before I tried it.  Here's both options for comparison.  A better choice might have been to straight stitch in silk.  But, by then I could see this bird wanted to go Metallic on me so that's what I did.

 

Nicola has painted his eye in such a way that it follows you, like in old oil paintings.  I didn't want to do much to it because I really liked her effect.  I chose to accent it with a fine silver wire/thread couched under the eye and a small seed stitch in the pupil to add a bit of spark.  I'm very pleased with the effect (which I can't reproduce with my camera).  You barely see even the line under his eye - it appears almost as a sheen rather than a couched wire.




Since Friday I've nearly completed all the accent stitches, which would have been the end.  But an idea tugged at me the entire time I worked on this bird.  I didn't think it was practical (because I'm so far away and not able to see the purse pattern) and wasn't sure Nicola would like it. Friday evening I decided to email Nicola about my idea.  Her response came on Saturday morning. In the next day or two I'll share what transpired.

At this point, I want to mention how much fun this project has been.  I've thoroughly enjoyed breaking out of the mindset of using strictly historical threads.  Not to mention the mixed media aspect which has challenged me to look at my embroidery differently - in an exciting new way that seems very aligned with the art world today.  It led me to order two books that I discovered through Nicola.  New Ideas in Goldwork by Tracy A. Franklin and Contemporary Whitework by Tracy and Nicola Jarvis.  I can see that Tracy and Nicola's work will be influencing mine in future.  Oh! the possibilities that have appeared on the horizon...