Wedding Dress Modesty Panel - Cream silk stitching

Welcome to part two of the wedding dress panel series.  Today we're looking at the creation of the basic satin stitched flower and leaf motifs. I had a couple of kind comments on the stitchery from the last post, but I only showed photos of the embroidery and embellishments on the dress proper, i.e. not my work at all. Sorry for any confusion there, it seems I wasn't sufficiently clear. From now on, all the work is mine! 

To be honest, a lot of them were not worked terribly well, especially not the smaller flowers, which weren't that easy to create.  However, I wasn't too worried about that as I knew the dodgy parts would be covered by outlining and beads, so I could get away with working a few flowers before finding the best method.  Above you can see all the small motifs done - a first milestone, then below a detail shot of one part once the first of that medium flowers was complete.

It was at the point in the 3rd photo that I ran out of thread!  I'd badly underestimated the amount of silk needed and thought that what I had in stock would do.  It didn't - not nearly!

The next part of the drama was to source a supplier who didn't charge the earth for shipping and would do so quickly, so not Barnyarns this time, but Silken Strands - a small, family business based in Wales.  Highly recommended for speed of service and reasonable postage costs.  I confess to having enjoyed 24 hours off the project to catch up with some other tasks whilst the threads arrived ☺

Drama stage three was receiving the threads (I bought two packs to be sure of having enough!) and finding that they were a whole shade lighter than the original one I'd had a few years!  Possibly it had darkened in storage.  Anyway, Janet and I agreed that, in view of the timing, it was more important to carry straight on and hope it wouldn't show later on than to try and source another shade.  Those of you who are, like me, very sensitive to nuances of colour (and have good screen resolution) may be able to see where one shade ends and the second began.  It was clearer in real life and screamed almost painfully at me....

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You can see the colour difference again here in this close up, but it fades into less significance when the whole lot of the silk work is done.  To be honest, that colour change was the only real disappointment to me in this project.

That's it for this time.  Next time I'll be taking you on a tour of the silver work parts.

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2017

Autumn Leaves Wedding Pillow - Leaf 5 and Complete Sprig

Welcome to part four and we start with part of the outlining of the fifth leaf (and some lovely sheen on the silk threads).

This was the last section of thread painting on this project and here are a few shots of how it was done.

Not much out of the ordinary to report this time, except the usual working and re-working of the leaf veins.  I don't miss that, I can tell you!! ☻

Next time we add the metallic parts.

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2017

Autumn Leaves Wedding Pillow - Leaves 3 & 4

Welcome to the third part of this project series.  Today we'll take a simple photographic journey through the creation of the third and fourth leaves.

With the vein gauge sorted, it was time to move on to shading the next couple of leaves, both of which were green based.

I wasn't happy with the leaf veins on the the third one either - too straight.  It was rather hard to get them sorted though, and I'm not sure I cracked it in the long run, but you can see what you think in later photos.

On to leaf number four now and some lovely yellows and soft greens this time:

The end of the needle painting in sight.  Join me next time for the fifth leaf. ☺

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2017

Autumn Leaves Wedding Pillow - Leaves 1 & 2

Thanks to all of you who commented on the last post.  It was a clear vote - one project at a time.

So, here's the first of a series of photo heavy posts showing most of the process of shading the leaves, then the numbering and then finally the whole piece made up.  Some stages didn't get photographed very much, so there are a few gaps, but I'm sure there's enough to get the idea. ☺

As it takes such a long time to choose, edit and upload the photos in order, (which is something that puts me off blogging a lot these days....), I'll be keeping text to a minimum - just the stuff that really adds something to the understanding of the project.

Let's make a start on leaves numbers one and two.

At this point I felt that the leaf veins were too heavy.  I'd been working them in the same thread as the shading was done - one strand of Madeira Silk, but it just seemed to overpower the leaves, especially the yellow and orange one.  Whilst walking up the road, I picked up a couple more leaves to have a look at the gauge of the leaf veins in nature and so decided to change to one strand of sewing cotton instead.

First came the delicate task of unpicking the original stitches, which wasn't easy!

Then came the re-stitching of the veins.  I know they're not a great deal finer, but, if nothing else, I got a chance to alter the colours and make the veins more curved and less stick-like.

Next time: Leaves three and four. ☺

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2017

Autumn Leaves Wedding Pillow - Design, Transfer and First Steps

It's finally time to get going on all the un-blogged projects that I've been working over the past three or four months.  It was rather hectic for a while, but now I feel that I've more or less caught up with myself and am ready to start documenting what I can remember of the process of creating three wedding gifts, one wedding dress modesty panel, one wedding card and a 'finishing up' project where I mounted or otherwise dealt with things where the stitchery had long since been completed, but was awaiting being made into something.

Let's start with the autumn leaves wedding souvenir pillow for the younger brother of the groom who received the white rose and lavender pillow back in May.  You could say that the pillow itself was the first one's little brother too as it was a little smaller, the design was simpler and quicker to work as I was using wider gauge threads.  More on that later.

The green leaves emoji you see above and may recognise from WhatsApp et al was, basically, the commission I received back in August, along with the wedding date and a 'neutral colour' for the background.  The bridal pair are very fond of leaves, woods and that kind of thing, and they often used this emoji as their symbol during their courtship and engagement.

The groom's mum initially asked if I could do it just as in the emoji - all rich green, but, as you can see, there simply isn't enough detail in it to make a worthwhile embroidery of any size.  It'd be ok as something about an inch square, but it's much too stylized to be any good as a thread painting.  So, I changed it to a more autumnal mix of colours, using this image I found on-line as a bit of a guide.  I zoomed the emoji to the right size on my tablet screen and traced it off there.  (Do you know how hard it is to trace off a screen?  Never mind one that keeps altering the size and jumping around if it feels too much pressure from your pencil!!?)  I then typed the numbering using the most rustic and woody looking font I could find, printed it out and made the following working design diagram, which, unless you're very new to my blog (in which case, Hi! Welcome☺), you'll have seen a few months ago.

The '10' was just that tiny bit too high up, so I compensated a bit when tracing it off onto the light beige/cream slub silk in my usual, high-tech, no expense spared style! ☺

I chose Madeira Silks to work with this time as they're much thicker than Pipers Silk Floss and have less sheen - perfect for the more rustic look needed for leaves.  Ok, yes, much, much faster to work with than the finer ones too.  Definitely no complaints there!

Here is the initial palette of autumn leaf shades I chose to work with.  It's also quite clear in this photo why I needed to re-wash and press the light silk.  Actually, I'd forgotten, but this fabric can be awfully 'papery' to work with.  I actually threw the last piece I tried to start a project on away as it was so unlike fabric and I couldn't bear the texture.  I'd worked on enough pieces of silk to know that it shouldn't have been like that, so, suspecting an over-zealous application of something with a stiffening effect, I headed to the washbasin with my trust Ecover delicate fabric detergent and some regular laundry softener, and gave it a good rinse out - after having washed a sample of the same fabric and pen to make sure I wasn't about to mess up my tracing.

The brown fabric shown underneath the main piece is a lovely, rich, reddish brown shade that came in a theme pack from The Silk Route a few years ago.  It was great to be able to use it for a perfectly matching project as the colour is really a dark copper tone.  Gorgeous!

Next up was making a start on the stitching by working the leaf sprig stem and beginning to outline one of the leaves.

The next day, I had to go and visit my mum in hospital and picked up a yellow and dark orange leaf of a similar type to the ones I was working as a colour and shading reference.  (My well-informed-on-nature friend, Emily, helped me to identify beech leaves as a possible type.)  As you can see from the outlined first leaf below, I'd woefully missed the mark when it came to how bright the colours needed to be!  Back to the Madeira Silk thread drawer and out came some much more vibrant shades to work with.

Here's the final line-up of colours and tools that were used in this project - including the sewing cottons that were needed for the finer leaf veins and the cute chocolate cupcake pincushion that a friend made me last spring and that really came into its own during this project.

Next time: progress on the leaves!

UNLESS you'd like me to mix the projects up a bit??  I have six whole projects to blog, including the finishing up one.  Would you like to see one at a time?  A mix of two or three at a time?  Or all of them in rotation?  What do you think?  Click over from your reader software and let me know.  They've all to be done and are all complete, so any order is fine with me.  You say.....

I also have a year end summary and projects planned for the year ahead to post (as well as how the ones I've started are coming on), plus a report on how I managed to downscale some of my stash - halved my fabric, can you believe?!  So, lots coming up.  Hoping to get my blogging umph back.  It's been gone for about two years now and it would be nice to get well and truly back into it.  No promises, but I'm going to try. ♥

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2017

Wedding pillow - lettering and finishing up

The final stages of the project coming up today! I managed to transfer some of my mobile phone photos over to the laptop too, so have included one of those shots here as well - one of me working on the lettering!! =)  As you can see, I have an incredibly high-tech, fancy, professional set-up - balancing my plain old embroidery hoop on the edge of my desk!!!

I was working on a lilac and light cappuccino shot silk fabric and so I chose a light gold thread to stand out well against the mid-toned background.  I tried a few metallic shades against it, but this was the one that really stood out - Kreinik Very Fine Braid in 102C couched down with coordinating Kreinik Cord in 102.

This third photo really shows the sheen on the flowers and also the good contrast of the pale gold.

I had originally planned to work the letters and numbers in a sort of solid method, probably by couching in rows, but owing to time limitations and, if I'm totally honest, complete lack of confidence in being able to pull off my first idea (and no time to trial it), made me think that outlining would be best.  I owe that idea to Amber of Ambrosia Stitches who, when I asked for ideas on Instagram, asked me if I was going to outline or fill the shapes, thus planting the idea of simplifying in my mind.

Here's the completed embroidery in the hoop before I removed and trimmed it for finishing.  As you can see, there were two lots of different light when I took these photos as they were done at different times of day and also in two opposite windows.  I've yet to work out the best lighting in our new home!!

Below you can see the completed pillow.  Sadly, I didn't get a very good full frontal shot of it as there was too much light bleaching out one side (as you can see a little here too), and I couldn't wait for a better time as I was about to hand it over!!

The finishing process was fairly simple.  After pressing the backing fabric and as much of the piece as I could (I was most disappointed to see I'd failed to avoid puckering....), I trimmed the surplus fabric away from the work and placed a line of tacking style stitches along the line I'd marked on the front when first transferring the design.  Then I placed the right sides together with a small piece of cotton based fabric (a reject square from one of the baby quilts!!) in between and tacked to the backing to protect both the stitching and the cream backing silk from getting scuffed on the metal work stitches.  They were tacked just next to the marking stitches, leaving the bottom open except for a centimetre or so each side of the corners.  I machine stitched just inside the marking stitches, trimmed off the corner excess and pressed back the edges of the open side.  After removing the tacking and marking stitches and putting some toy stuffing in to make a proper little cushion shape, I slip stitched the bottom edge closed.  Done!

I was delighted to hear that the bridal pair were thrilled with it and this photo was kindly sent by the groom's mum the day before the wedding.

You can also get some idea of the size from this shot too.  It's only a 7"/18cm sided square, so only a souvenir size.

Glad to have a big project done and so it's on to anniversary things for Sir and also making things for the two or three shows I hope to enter this summer.  More on all of those soon.

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2016

Wedding pillow - white roses

Part three of the wedding pillow.  Today let's look at the roses.

I didn't seem to take many WIP photos with my digital camera, but there are plenty on my Instagram stream, if anyone would like to see more.  @sew_in_love_blog

Instagram is great and easy to use.  All you need is a simple smart phone to set it up, then you can also follow your selected accounts on a computer if you want to.  Quite a number of needlework bloggers already have accounts and we often post there well before blogging as it's so quick to do, whereas a blog posting can take quite a lot of writing and tweaking.  I didn't have time to stop and blog during this project, but a quick shot on my phone camera and upload to IG meant that followers were able to track my progress in real time.  It was quite fun!!!

I've now filled in the Pipers Silk colours for the rest of the project on the previous post and the white rose petals were worked in White, Ecru, Pale Mushroom, Pale Sycamore, Sycamore, Lime Yellow and Bright Lime, with some tiny stitches in China Pink at the base of the rosebud.

This last one shows some of the sheen nicely, although it isn't the sharpest of photos.

Next time I'll share the lettering and the finishing up into a small cushion/pillow.

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2016