Chysanthemum Leaves

My little dog has been sick the last few days, so I haven't gotten much embroidery done. When Beau isn't feeling well, he likes to be held and stroked, basically all day. He's very cute and snuggly, but holding him doesn't really allow me to embroider. I only managed to do an hour and a half or so two nights ago when he decided to hide under the bed for a little while (it's his man cave).

As I said in my last Japanese embroidery post, it was time to work on the two larger chrysanthemum leaves. I had done the first small chrysanthemum leaf in horizontal stitch, but when I looked more closely at the written instructions, they said to stitch along the weft lines in the fabric. So I decided to do that for the last two leaves; here's the weft foundation for the first leaf:

I thought, overall, it turned out pretty smooth and neat. I'm not fully satisfied with the curves in the leaf, but I just need to develop this skill a bit more. 

At this point, I realized my fabric was really not taut enough along the weft of the silk, which was the warp of the muslin. Yes, it turns out that I had framed this up incorrectly. I had the silk on perpendicular to how it should be. Apparently, JE pieces are always framed up sideways. I wish the kit would've mentioned this. But c'est la vie. 

So I unwound one roller bar, tugged the fabric through another centimeter or so, rewound it, and stuck the nail in to hold it. Much tighter this time.

Next, I moved on to couching the silver along the vein lines, and although I considered using a tissue paper transfer to mark the lines out, I still wasn't sure if that was the right method, and in the end, I decided it wasn't worth it on something like this. I mean, they're leaf veins; I feel like there's a bit of leeway in where they go. So I just put them in where I felt like they should go:

I couched the veins the same way I had done them on the first leaf, but I wasn't really thrilled with how they turned out this time. They don't show up as nicely and just look a bit odd to me. But I pressed on to the next leaf, hoping they would turn out better the second time:

It seemed like it was going okay till this point. I think that leaf with the one vein couched in looks rather nice. Unfortunately, the vein lines out to the side of the center vein were less successful:

The two veins on the left are the issue. They pulled my smooth weft stitches rather awkwardly and ended up almost blending into them. It's possible my weft stitches weren't tight enough, but I think that's still not the main issue. 

I asked my FB group about the issues with my leaves, and one woman told me that chrysanthemum leaves are actually typically stitched with horizontal foundation (like my first leaf) because otherwise the vein lines can disappear into the weft foundation if they end up being too parallel, which is exactly what happened in this case. She pointed out that I don't have to follow the instructions exactly if I think another way will produce better results.

I probably will do horizontal stitch on chrysanthemum leaves from now on, but I don't regret doing these ones this way because I was able to try weft foundation for the first time and see for myself why it's less effective for this particular element. Incidentally, it's probably the easiest foundation stitch to do well because you can space the stitches perfectly evenly since you have the lines in the weft to guide you. I just don't think it's the best foundation for these leaves due to their orientation in the pattern.

I also found out that the tissue transfer (or stitch transfer) method was the right way to mark out the vein lines. I will definitely try doing it for superimposed work on a JE project at some point, but I maintain that it still wouldn't be worth the time and trouble in this case because the positioning of leaf veins in nature is not an exact science. They tend to vary a lot, and I don't think having them drawn out would have resolved my real issue with these leaves (since that stemmed from the foundation stitch).

Anyway, we learn as we go! When I finish the rest of the pattern, I may go back and redo these leaves since I think I could do them a bit better in horizontal foundation, but for now, here's what I've done so far:

It's coming along! Up next is the first set of wave lines below the chrysanthemum. I'm excited to do these because it's a new technique, and I love learning new things. But it will have to wait because my little Beau has a vet appointment this morning. He has perked up a bit today and eaten a little baked chicken, but he's still not 100%, so I'm going to take him in just in case.

Oh, as an update, the protective paper I ordered from the JEC finally arrived. I was a little disappointed to discover that it's just regular tissue paper. I had thought it would have a smooth side to protect the silk a bit more, but it's really nothing special. It wasn't expensive or anything, but just not worth the shipping costs unless you're ordering a bunch of stuff (which I did).

One woman I talked to said she doesn't use tissue paper anymore because it can catch the silk on the fibers. I'm wondering what else I could use to protect my work. I need to ask her what she uses. Still, I do think the tissue paper is better than the muslin, which seems to catch the silk constantly. I moved the muslin cover to my Jacobean piece, which I really need to get back to. Hopefully sometime during this long weekend after my Beau starts feeling better.