Phase 2: Flax Leaf Effect, Part 1

In my last post, I had finished the foundation of my second segment using purple twisted silk. Here it is, as a reminder:

Although it took me a few days, I finally worked up the courage to start the flax leaf effect technique that overlays this foundation. Flax leaf effect is a geometric technique, so it has to be fairly precise.

The first step of this process is to create equilateral triangles with 6mm sides over the entire foundation. You can do this in flat or twisted silk, but I was planning to use a single strand of #1 silver metallic thread for the entire thing. I started by laying lines perpendicular to the weft over the entire foundation, with the help of my triangle and my measuring template:

You can just barely see the silver lines beneath every other line on this 3mm measuring template because that's how exact I got them. I was very precise and took out stitch after stitch until I was satisfied. Here's how they looked when I was done:

The last stitch or two at the bottom were perhaps slightly off. I had a bit of a struggle there, but if they weren't perfectly parallel, they were really, really close. And all the others were damn precise. 😂 

I did find a trick that helped me lay lines more evenly, and that was to not half-hitch the metal thread on the needle. Instead, I just threaded it through like I would normal thread. The reason this was so helpful was because it was much easier to take out stitches and reset them. I could just remove the thread from the needle and then use my tekobari to take out the last stitch or two. (It's much harder to take the thread off the needle if it's half-hitched, and you can only do it once or twice before the thread becomes too damaged.) 

Doing it this way did put a little extra wear on the part of the thread in the eye, but not much. So I just ended the thread a couple inches sooner. When I could easily redo stitches, I was much more patient about it and took the time to get each one right.

The next step in creating my equilateral triangles was to lay lines at a 60-degree angle to the first set of lines. I used my 30-60-90 triangle to get the exact angle:

I then used my 3mm template and the triangle to space the lines 6mm apart. And they came out really well again (with the help of my easy redo technique):

Look how perfect those diamonds are at the top! I did have a little trouble at the bottom tip, but that's just a tricky, narrow little area to work in. And they still seemed pretty good to me.

The next step was to lay my 30-60-90 triangle the other way to do the third side of the equilateral triangles:

I freely confess that, at this point, I paid a little less attention to the triangle and a little more attention to making sure the third line crossed all the intersections of the lines going in the first two directions. But they were all very close because my first two sets of lines were very even overall. And here are all my beautiful equilateral triangles:

They look very precise to me, and even though I wasn't entirely sure about the bottom tip, I figured it would probably be okay. 

The last step for the triangles was to couch them all down at their intersections. I used white silk couching thread and waxed it lightly to help it stand up to the silver metallic thread. Here's what it looked like when I was at about the halfway point:

You can see the left side has a slightly more quilted appearance than the right. 

And here it is with all the couching completed:

I think it looks pretty good! It's certainly the most even geometric pattern I've ever achieved. And in my next post, Part 2, you'll get to see the finished flax leaf effect. The second part was a little trickier and took me another day to work up the chutzpah to tackle it.