Beginning Phase 1

After I finished my second Midori piece in November, I was pretty excited to begin phase 1 (Mile High), but all I managed to do last month was get the piece framed up and put in my guidelines for the bamboo trunk and the skylines. I used the stitch transfer method and a line of held thread to put them in:

The end of November was very busy with the holiday, so I didn't really get to start stitching the piece till this weekend when Mary Alice happily held a couple of classes. I was thrilled because I have a week off at the end of this month, and now I can stitch on this piece during my break. Otherwise I would have had to wait till January and would have wasted that whole week off.

First up was the plum blossom. I learned a bit more about twisting thread for this. I had been somewhat confused about the right way to twist threads, so I asked a lot of questions. Essentially, it turns out, most twists should be a pretty tight twist, and when you check it, there should be no air in the loop at the bottom of the twist. So the adzuki bean, rice grain, and sesame seed are nice visuals but are perhaps a little large for the loops in reality. And unless you're doing a fairly loose twist, there won't be any space at all in the loop

Additionally, the number of times you have to run the thread up your palm to achieve the right amount of twist differs from person to person, which is probably why every book says something different. It depends somewhat on the size of your hands, but also on how much friction you achieve between your hands. The sweatier your palms are, the more friction there will be, and the tighter of a twist you'll achieve. 

Mary Alice said the overtwist usually needs more twisting than the undertwist, which is just the opposite of what my Midori booklet said. But after playing with it quite a bit, I found that I usually need to run the silk up my right palm twice to achieve the right undertwist (no loop) and then run it up my left palm about one and a half times to get the right overtwist. Any more than that and it untwists a ton. Your mileage may vary, so just play around with it till it looks right.

Anyway, back to the plum blossom. This was supposed to be padded halfway in self-padding, which is the same thread you use to stitch the visible part. You use a ladder stitch to do the padding so that there's no padding on the underside of the fabric. I used a 4 ->1 regular (tight) twist of dark pink silk, though it looks more burgundy in this picture:

I didn't pack these stitches too close together because they're just supposed to give a little lift to the end of the petal. That way the inner part of the petals will dip a bit in the center, like they do in real flowers. Padding is always done perpendicular to the final surface stitches, so that's why these are set horizontal to the petal. With the padding in place, I started on the surface stitches, which are done in vertical layer (essentially the same as satin stitch):

I worked from the center to the right. Notice that these stitches don't fan out the way they did on the plum blossoms I did on my second Midori piece. Instead, the stitches are parallel. After finishing the right side, I went back to the center and stitched to the left:

I was pretty pleased with this petal (though the picture is a bit blurry), but I accidentally snagged the thread on my scissors so after I finished the whole flower, I had to take this petal out and redo it. I'll be more careful in the future!

I did this petal first because in Japanese embroidery, you start with the largest petal, which is always in the foreground. That's the head. Then you move to the hands, which are on either side of the head. I could have started with either one, but I went to the left:

I got the angle of this second petal wrong the first time and it created a little jog in the one-point open space between the petals, so I ended up redoing it later. But when I stitched the other hand, it turned out a little better on the first try:

After that, I stitched the feet — first the left one and then the right one because the right one was overlapped by other petals on both sides. Whatever is most in the background gets done last. I thought these petals both turned out pretty nicely:

This picture also shows the first and second petals after I redid them. Although the one-point open space isn't entirely consistent between all the petals, it's pretty good. And the stitching is smooth and neat with a fairly even twist maintained throughout. I was really pretty proud of this little plum blossom.

And I accomplished all this in only five hours! 😂 It just takes so much time to twist the silk correctly and then get every stitch placed just right. I took out two entire petals and redid them, but I took out individual stitches many more times because I wanted to make sure I did this right. The time really added up. This was quite literally all I accomplished the first day. But I'm pleased with it, so it's worth it.