"Finishing" the Cherry Blossoms and Chrysanthemums

You probably thought I was finished with the cherry blossoms and chrysanthemums piece. Little did you know it had to actually be "finished." Yep, there's a whole process for finishing Japanese embroidery. Spoiler alert: it did not go well.

I finally got the velvet fabric from one of my teachers (the JEC has been out of stock forever), and I spent most of Sunday sewing it into a pouch, stuffing it with cotton balls I unwound (this literally took hours), and then hand sewing the final section:

I think it turned out relatively well. It's pretty smooth for having been stuffed with cotton balls. It's quite a firm pillow as well. I wasn't sure if it should be softer, but I stuffed it pretty full as that felt right. 

Anyway, I patted the front side of the embroidery to loosen up any fibers, then flipped the frame over and slightly more vigorously patted the back to get rid of them for good.

Next up was the wheat starch. The JEC book said to just mix with a little water to form a thin paste. The Midori booklet said to heat it slowly into a thick paste and let it cool. I did the latter, as one of my teachers had said the Midori instructions were correct when I read them to her. I need to clarify if the JEC book is also correct and if so, which one is better. After heating it and stirring pretty constantly, it was kind of the consistency of yogurt, which is what the Midori booklet said I was going for:

You're supposed to smear it just on the back of the stitches, totally avoiding the fabric. I don't feel like I have fat fingers — my ring size is only a 4 3/4 — but they were too fat for this. Those petals and leaves are tiny! The largest ones were barely half the width of my finger, so every damn time I tried to smear the paste on the silk threads, it also got on the silk fabric. Siiiigh.

Whatever. I took a damp towel and wiped the fabric wherever the paste went. Then I wiped over the back of the whole piece with a clean section of the damp towel (the JEC book said to do this — I'm still not sure it accomplished anything).

Next up was the steaming. I heated my iron up as hot as it would go. Then I unplugged it (for safety reasons), doubled up the damp towel, laid it over the bottom of the iron, and proceeded to steam the fabric by moving the upside-down iron underneath the embroidery frame. It was very close to the silk fabric but not quite touching. The heat from the iron with the damp towel steamed the entire piece. I couldn't get a picture of this because it was too awkward on my own.

I can, however, safely say that my iron was not intended to be used upside down, because whatever water was in it spilled out onto my nice clean floor while I did this steaming process. So I wiped it up with a towel, and now that section of the floor is super clean. Next time, I would empty all the water out of the iron first. Live and learn.

The next step was to get out the finishing paper. I laid it shiny/smooth side down on the embroidery and let the iron cool down to the low setting. Then once again, I unplugged the iron and ran it very lightly over the finishing paper:

While I ironed it, I lightly supported the fabric from beneath with my fingertips, mainly to make sure the iron wasn't too hot and I wasn't pressing down too hard. The books all said it shouldn't be too hot for my fingers, and it wasn't:

With that done, I peeled back the finishing paper to see how it looked:

It seemed okay, but if you look closely at the picture above, you can see some purple marks on the finishing paper. Somehow the purple silk thread bled onto the paper. I didn't realize the full portent of this just yet, though. So I flipped it over and did the same thing to the other side. The Midori booklet didn't say to do this, but the JEC book did, so I figured I'd do it. 

Once that was done, I flipped the whole thing back over to see if the steaming and finishing paper really had brightened the silk, as they promised to do:

It definitely looked wetter, but I was less sure about brighter. I let it dry for about 18 hours. The Midori booklet said 8 hours; the JEC book said up to two days. I figured 18 would be sufficient. Here's how it looked after it dried:

At first, I thought it looked nice; I wasn't sure it looked better, though. And when I noticed where the purple silk thread had bled onto the fabric, I was sure it didn't look better. Right here:

It's tiny and not super vibrant, but it's definitely there and it definitely wasn't there before I did the finishing process. Grrrr. 

I'm still trying to figure out why it happened. No one on my FB group has given me any idea yet, but one fellow embroiderer said it's happened to her as well. Is all this wheat starch and finishing paper worth it? I'm not so sure if this is the result. 

Anyway, the next step was just to remove it from the frame. I pulled the nails out first to loosen it in the warp direction (which was actually the weft on the silk because, as mentioned in a previous post, I didn't know JE pieces are framed sideways when I framed this up):

Then I snipped the lacing thread and tugged it out:

And finally, once it was off the frame, I cut the herringbone stitch to remove the silk from the muslin backing. This method of framing left me with little holes, but I suppose a nice mat could cover those up if I had it framed properly:

I still think it's pretty, despite the purple smudge. Will I frame it? I don't know. The other woman whose silk thread bled onto her fabric said she hung the piece anyway and no one's ever noticed. So maybe I'll frame it up eventually. Or, you know, just stick it in a trunk with the rest of my finished pieces. I never do get around to hanging all of them. I just don't have the room at the moment.

But I'm proud of myself for finishing it, even though I'm kind of wishing I'd just lightly steamed it and skipped all the other finishing steps. How much brighter is the silk really? I'm not convinced it was worth it. When I have my first real JE lesson in a couple weeks, I'll ask about it.