Phase 2: Lattice Segment Complete

These past two weekends, I worked on my phase 2 piece and made some good progress. For starters, I finished my first maple leaf and was reasonably pleased with how it turned out:

The one-point open space could be a little better defined perhaps, but it's there. And this maple leaf is tiny, so it was hard to get in any space at all. I was pretty satisfied with it. The twist is fairly even, and the edges look clean as well.

I measured the edges of the segment to the right of the maple leaf, and it turns out that when I placed my foundation stitches, I was kind of tugging the thread guidelines inward a bit, so the edges are actually just inside where the ribs for this segment should be, which means I don't have to take it all out. I can just couch my silver fan ribs right along the edges of the foundation. Thank heavens for small mercies.

But the holding stitch that goes over that foundation is the flax leaf effect, which apparently has to be very precise geometrically or it will not turn out. So I decided to leave that segment till closer to the end, when I've had a bit more practice and am feeling a little more confident. Instead, I moved on to the center segment of the fan, which is done in weft foundation with lattice work over the top — something I'm already familiar with from my clouds (a.k.a. pine trees) on my phase 1 piece.

First up, I laid my weft guidelines and then used two strands of flat silk in a lovely sky blue to begin putting in the foundation:

This took a really long time — literal hours to get it smoothly in place.

One thing that helped me see well enough to get it pretty smooth and even was a light box. Mary Alice sent me the cardboard kit for one — it had belonged to another Japanese embroiderer who had passed away. I bought the materials to wire a lightbulb for it and created this handy little tool:

The lightbulb itself is hidden by the white cardboard that comes halfway down the fourth side. And the whole thing just rests on the frame. Here's the inside:

When it's turned on, it provides great illumination right where you want it without having a ton of light directly in your eyes:

It's ideal for me because I get terrible migraines, so I don't like light shining right in my eyes. I really like how handy this is. And with the help of it, I finally finished my weft foundation:

Once it was in, I had to go back and remove the guidelines I'd put in with the white silk couching thread. Then it was time to start laying the lattice work. I used a double strand of #1 silver, half-hitched on my needle. I also used my 45-degree triangle and my 4mm guideline transparency to try to get these lines as even as I could:

I really did my very best to be precise with these, and they're pretty good, but they're by no means exact. The angle of the lines at the bottom is slightly off the angle at the top. But I honestly don't know how it happened or what I could have done differently. I measured every single line using my tools, and still, after every six or seven lines, I'd notice that the most recent lines were not quite parallel with the lines I'd done several lines before. Sigh. Yet another reason to hold off on the flax leaf effect. Clearly, my geometrical placement of thread is wanting.

At this point, I had a slight crisis wherein I gave myself a second-degree burn on the tip of my left index finger (while taking a break from JE to make caramelized pecans). It took lots of cool water, fresh aloe vera, and some pain medication before the pain lessened enough to allow me to return to my piece. I still couldn't used that finger, but with my thumb and middle finger, I managed to move on to putting in the perpendicular lines:

I had the same problem going this direction. No matter what I did, I couldn't get the lines to be perfectly parallel all the way down. Believe me, I tried. I took lines out and put them back in dozens of times. But somehow, they always ended up slightly off. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

However, this was clearly the best I could do at my current skill level, and I didn't think it was super noticeable that they weren't exactly parallel everywhere, so I started the long weary process of couching all the corners down. Here's when I was at about the halfway point:

 

After quite a long time at this, I finally finished. And here it is, my first fan segment completed:

Even though I know the lines aren't perfect, I think they look pretty good. The squares appear to have fairly perpendicular corners in spite of that not actually being the case everywhere. Overall, I'm quite happy with how it turned out. And I love the silver against the light blue. It's such a lovely combination.

Obviously, I need to ask if there are any other tips or tricks to making sure lines stay parallel. Maybe it just takes months or years of practice. If so, I will hope I get the hang of it in time to do the flax leaf effect reasonably well. But for now, I'm happy to have the first segment done. It feels like a major accomplishment at this point.