Jacobean Motifs Stitched in Silk

Oh, the agony of the fourth quarter — when work is busy, I am tired, and embroidery has to take a backseat. But I have been working on it. My progress has just been very, very slow. Some might say glacial. For example, I stitched this stem in padded satin stitch, and it took me something like six or seven hours:

The stem is only about 4 inches long, but I padded it with split stitch before I did the satin stitch over the top, and I had to take out sections of the satin stitching multiple times because I wasn't satisfied with it. I find it's actually much trickier to achieve a neat satin stitch on something very narrow than on something a little wider. After redoing various sections two or three times, I finally accepted that this was the best I could do for now.

I think if this fabric had a higher thread count (it's 45-ct.), it would be easier to achieve a smooth line, but sometimes the needle just wouldn't go exactly where I wanted it to. It was either too far in or too far out. But it's pretty neat overall and from a distance of even a couple feet, I trust it won't be too noticeable.

Having finally finished this stem last weekend, I decided to try the flower motif at the top of it in Au Ver à Soie silk thread. I started with the inner petals and stitched them in a lovely pale yellow Soie d'Alger:

I felt like the petals needed a bit more definition, so I separated them by a single thread of the blue I planned to stitch the outer petals with. Satin stitch can be tedious, so I took a break from it to fill the center of this flower in French knots:

There are actually two shades of yellow there — the same pale yellow that I used for the outer petals and a slightly darker golden Soie de Paris towards the center — with a few blue knots for variety. I was pretty happy with this actually. I will say that French knots are a little harder to stitch in silk than in cotton floss, but they turned out all right.

Next, I started stitching the outer petals in two strands of that lovely blue Soie d'Alger thread. I prefer two strands for satin stitch because it fills the area more completely, but I always use a laying tool to get the two strands to lie perfectly flat instead of twisting round each other:

It is soooo shiny, it makes my heart throb. I had only planned to do one petal at first, but I had enough silk left over to start the next one, so I did because silk is too expensive to waste. I only had one concern at this point, which was that the blue might be too bright for the rest of the piece, which is in more muted colors. So before continuing on with the blue, I wanted to test out my plan of doing couched lattice work on these outer petals in the pale yellow:

Happily, I thought the yellow lattice work did mute the brightness of the blue just a touch. You can really see the difference with the half-finished flower:

The blue is quite bright on its own, but I think the yellow tones it down perfectly. By the time I finished the petals, I was really in love with this flower:

It just sings for me. It's a touch brighter than the rest of the piece — largely due to the sheen of the silk — but I don't mind for such a large flower. I think it's perfect.

But I still had the leaves to do. I wanted to try this whole flower in silk, so I went back to The Attic and picked up some pale seafoam green Soie d'Alger. And while there (as often happens in lovely needlework shops), I discovered something else:

Peach beads!

The peach beads I had been searching for. I was never wholly satisfied with the pale pink beads I had found. The peach thread helped them appear more peach, but I wanted them to really be peach. And the Attic had some lovely ones that seemed a perfect match. We'll come back to those beads later. In the meantime, I embroidered the four little leaves in rows of stem stitch:

The pale green also helps tone down the flower as a whole. I'm really pleased with this one. The luster of the silk is just magical.

Now back to those peach beads. I took out all the pale pink beads and replaced them with the pale peach beads, as you can see with these two small bud flowers:

It's not a huge difference. But the color is just slightly more what I was looking for. It's a little deeper and richer. Here's what the piece looks like as a whole:

I love how well the silk flower fits in with the rest of the piece. It partly makes me wish that I had done the whole piece in silk, but then I likely couldn't have used some of the variegated threads I've used and couldn't have used as many colors in so many different shades (since that would have been quite expensive). And I kind of like the idea that only certain elements are in silk. It adds a bit of variety. 

But having looked at this for a while, I decided the silk flower needed one more thing to tie it into the rest of the piece — some silver rococo trim, like the larger of my two small flowers has. For one thing, the piece just needs a bit more silver, and for another, it will bring an element of cohesion to these flower elements. So I carefully couched a line of the rococo around it:

If possible, I love this flower even more now that it has the silver trim. It just lends that elegant finishing touch that I think it needed. And as part of the whole, I think it's perfect:

I am so happy with this piece. I don't say that about everything I stitch, but I'm really loving this one. I find the color scheme both elegant and cheerful. The patterns are delicate but still varied and interesting. I really think it's coming along. 😊