Chrysanthemums and Larger leaves

With the cherry blossoms on my first Japanese embroidery piece finished, it was time to move onto the larger leaves and the chrysanthemums. I was very excited to try something new, so with great eagerness and gusto, I did a horizontal foundation on the first larger leaf and then carefully couched the silver thread down to make the veins:

This leaf seemed to go much more easily and quickly than any of the other elements I've done so far. The only problem I had is that once I had laid the green foundation, I had to guess where the veins were supposed to go since the pattern lines were no longer visible.

Maybe I should have traced the leaf and the veins onto my tracing paper, laid the paper over the top of the leaf, and then sewn a line of held thread down to show me where the lines should go. But for something this small, I didn't think it was really worth my time. And I wasn't sure that was the right method anyway, so I just checked the pattern in the book again and guestimated where to put the veins. I still think they turned out okay.

But there is one mistake with this leaf that I didn't discover till I was done. I followed a drawing in my kit instead of the actual written instructions. The drawing made it look like the stitches should be made horizontal to the center line of the leaf, but the instructions actually say to do a weft foundation — which means to make satin stitches along the horizontal lines in the fabric. And when I looked more closely at the photograph of the finished piece, it does indeed use a weft foundation rather than one horizontal to the leaf. 

But the leaf still looks nice and I've had to take out too many stitches on this piece already. So I decided to leave that leaf and just do the proper weft foundation on the next two leaves. After all, stitching horizontally to the element rather than the fabric is a legitimate technique. It's not the one intended here, but ehh, it looks okay anyway. Still, the moral of the story is it pays to read the instructions closely right before you do the actual stitching. I will probably read them twice when I'm starting a new element from now on, just to make sure I understand.

Anyway, then it was on to my first chrysanthemum! I'd heard dire stories about these, so I was a bit nervous, but I dove right in, trying to do a 40-degree slant and leave a one-point open space between each petal:

It was hard. The slant is a little bit off, though not too bad. But getting an even one-point open space is damn tricky, especially since the ridges in the silk mean it only wants you to stick your needle in certain spots, which is not always the spot that will give you the desired one-point open space. 

I admit, I cheated. I know I'm supposed to use my right hand above the frame and my left hand beneath it. I know. But my right hand is more capable of placing the needle in the exact  right spot. It can do what my left hand just sometimes can't do, even with the best will in the world. So sometimes I used my right hand to place the needle coming up through the fabric and then pushed it the rest of the way with my left hand. If this is wrong, I don't want to be right. It was just so much easier when I did it that way. 

I got this far and then I got stuck:

I had been working top to bottom and left to right because that's what the kit and the books said to do. But they also said to work the foreground elements first and then work the elements behind them. Can you see the problem? The lower flower's petals overlap two of the petals on the flower I'd already started. So I couldn't work strictly left to right and top to bottom and also work the foreground elements first. What to do...

I did what I always do when I'm unsure about something; I consulted the internet. I went on my JE FB group to ask if I should do the other flower first, or at least part of it, before finishing those last two petals. And as ever, I got my answer. 

Top to bottom. So it turns out you don't really stitch top to bottom at all. Well, you do, but not in the way I thought. Each stitch is done top to bottom (if you can; obviously some go from one side to the other) because it's just easier to stitch towards yourself and tension correctly and stroke the silk smoothly. 

Left to right. The design as a whole is stitched left to right so that your hand doesn't rest on and rough up the silk you've already stitched. So I should have worked my way down all the elements on the left side and then gradually moved to the right side. It probably does make sense to generally stitch top to bottom as you work your way from left to right so your hand doesn't rest on lower elements while working upper ones. But mostly it's left to right that matters. 

Foreground elements first. And what matters even more than left to right is doing foreground elements first so that they are fuller and stand out more. If you do them second, apparently most embroiderers have a tendency to make them smaller than they should be and then they kind of recede into the background instead of really standing out. Even though doing foreground elements first may not always allow a strict left-to-right construction, you can put protective paper over finished elements (shiny side against the silk) to keep them safe. I've ordered some from the JEC, which should be here this week, so I'll start doing that.

A very experienced Japanese embroiderer was kind enough to call me and explain some of this over the phone. It was so helpful. After that conversation, I paused on the first mum and started on the foreground mum next to it:

I started with a petal that had no other petals overlapping it since that's the foreground element of this flower. Typically there's only one. This particular mum actually has two in the original design, though one disappeared in the way I traced it. I just went with the one at the back that was still there and began stitching around to the left. You can see that I carefully drew a central line down each petal with a pencil and then marked off the 40-degree slant. This helped me a lot with keeping the correct stitching angle:

Once I got to the bottom, I went back to the top and started stitching around to the right since you're supposed to end on the petal that's overlapped on both sides by other petals (because it's the element most in the background). 

Ignore that half petal there at the bottom. I ran out of thread and decided to wait till I was in that general area again because I didn't want to thread up again for half a petal and then have to move to a different spot in the pattern. The petal to the right of the half-petal is the one that is overlapped on both sides by the other petals, so it should be stitched last.

I will finish up this foreground mum and then go back and finish the last two petals on the other mum. I had planned to do the third mum next, but now that I know I should be stitching left to right, I will go on to the weft-foundation leaves with the couched silver veins instead and then move onto the first wave pattern at the bottom.

The mums are actually going much more quickly for me than the cherry blossoms did. But this may just be because I've had more practice handling the silk now and it's getting a bit easier to do. Whatever the reason, I'm enjoying it more now. The last picture above was taken in natural light, and the colors are much closer to how they look in real life. I'm really pleased with how it's turning out. Even the mistakes don't bother me because I can see my progress and it's delightful to see the improvements. I'm really loving it!