Phase 2: Flax Leaf Effect, Part 2

It's lucky I had a four-day weekend this past weekend, or I'm not sure when I would have summoned up the energy and time to tackle the flax leaf effect. Not gonna lie, I found it a little tricky and very time consuming. I had ended my last stitching session with a bunch of equilateral triangles. And now it was time to fill them in with the star-like pattern that would complete the flax leaf effect.

The full pattern is completed by creating three equilateral triangles within each existing equilateral triangle. I started by coming up in one corner and going down in the corner horizontal to it:

You can see the thread comes up just outside the top right corner of the first full triangle and the needle goes down just outside the top left corner.

I pulled it most of the way down but left a little loop and then brought the needle up just outside the third tip of the triangle:

Next, I poked the needle down inside the loop in the lower third of the triangle (emphatically not the center of the triangle or your triangles won't be equally sized):

I tugged the loop tight around the needle and then sank the needle snuggly, and voila! I had three little triangles inside the first one:

It looks a little like the flux capacitor. 😂 But the triangles did seem equally sized to me, so I was satisfied with it. I then repeated this pattern across the entire row of triangles facing this direction:

Next, I did the row of triangles facing the other direction:

Once I had done the following two rows of triangles, the star pattern finally began to emerge:

The star pattern is at kind of an angle, in case that helps you see it. My star centers on this first set weren't as nice as I'd like them to be because it took me a while to figure out where to place the needle at the corners so that the threads were more snug in the center of each star. But I did figure it out, and my later stars were much better:

I didn't go back and try to redo the first row of stars because pulling that much metal thread out of silk can make the silk fray, which would mean having to redo the whole segment. But I'm okay with a little imperfection because the point is to learn, and I actually like to see my progress.

At this point, I hadn't done all the little partial triangles on the edges yet (you can see the gaps in the photo above), but all the full triangles were done, and I thought it looked pretty good. It was a bit tricky to figure out the partial triangles. I had to use the rest of the pattern to help me figure out where to place the stitches so they would mirror the ones next to them. So I worked at it and tried different tricks to figure out the angles, and in the end, I think they turned out quite nicely:

I know there were a couple where I didn't get the angle exactly perfect. But I don't think you can really tell when you look at the completed segment:

Whatever mistakes I may have made, they were small enough that when looked at from even a foot away, I didn't notice them. Plus, most of them were along the edges, which will eventually have fan ribs going along them to distract further from any imperfections. 

Doing this part of the flax leaf effect took me about three hours. Part 1 took me about three hours as well as well. With the foundation, I would guess this entire segment took me somewhere between 10 and 12 hours. But it was worth the effort. I'm ecstatically pleased with this pattern. It's so delicate and pretty — almost lacey. And I think all the colors complement each other very nicely so far.

But after seeing this segment completed, I decided to do some silver pinks with dark purple centers for the two flowers that touch the purple segment because I'm concerned the lavenders are too close in color. I think doing those flowers in silver will help them stand out a bit more and add a nice variety. I may do that next, or I may do the foundation for the last segment that needs one. We'll see what I feel in the mood for. 😊