Jacobean Goldwork and Other Progress

You would be forgiven for thinking I've given up entirely on my Jacobean piece. I haven't, but I haven't worked on it much over the last few months. I've been too wrapped up in my Japanese embroidery. But owing to the sheer number of cords on my phase 2 piece, I suddenly found the motivation to work on something else — anything else. 😂

I also discovered some inspiration for how to embroider one section that had stumped me for ages. So today, I will show you the progress I made this weekend. Last time I wrote about this piece, I had stopped in the middle of working on this large flower at the top:

Sometime in the last two and a half months, I embroidered the large leaf above these petals using buttonhole stitch in a variegated thread:

The center vein is done in split stitch, and the overturn is done in satin stitch, to give a darker, more shadowy effect. I like the variegated thread a lot. This isn't my favorite leaf, but it was fun to try this technique, and I think it works well here.

Next came the moment of inspiration. I had seen a piece of goldwork on Instagram that alternated between various goldwork metals, and I thought that might work really well for this other leaf off to the left of the flower. I had already stitched the bottom portion in a dark teal satin stitch, presumably around the same time I stitched the buttonhole leaf:

I forgot to take a picture at that point, so in the above picture, you can also see the first layer of felt padding, which I stitched down to give the goldwork a bit of height. Next, I stitched another piece of felt down over this one to cover the entire area more closely and add still more height:

Then came the laborious process of measuring, cutting, and stitching down the little segments of metal threads. I chose to do two rows of smooth purl alternating with one row of bright check:

It's a tedious job, and it took me hours, but I was already loving it at this point. There are nearly endless variations that can be achieved with different numbers and types of metal threads, but I liked this one for this particular leaf. Here's that section completed:

The edges of the metal threads were a little uneven, so I started adding some delicate silver 371 thread to the bottom edge, as you can see above. I decided to use this super thin metal thread because I didn't want to cover up the satin stitching; I just wanted to smooth out that edge a little, and I think it worked pretty well:

Then I sunk the ends and started stitching the bottom edge of the satin stitched area in a No. 1 1/2 silver twist:

I then added the same silver twist along the top edge of the leaf, sank all the ends, and used curved needles to secure the metal thread ends on the back of the fabric. Here's the almost complete leaf:

I absolutely love it. The angle of my goldwork isn't perfectly parallel across the whole leaf, but I still think it looks beautiful. It's so sparkly! 

The last step was to add small green beads to the bottom edge (they're on my original pattern, though I didn't mark them on the fabric):

I'm really happy with this leaf and glad I waited for inspiration to strike before stitching it.

Next, I moved on to the little flag-like leaf at the top of the main flower:

I initially tried doing this in split stitch, but it wasn't very successful, so I redid it in long and short stitch, and while my blending isn't perfect, I still think it looks decent. It's a nice spot of warmer colors at the top there.

The last step to completing this flower was to do the center petal, where I decided to couch down a pair of #5 silver Jap threads with dark blue silk couching thread:

I used the #5 silver thread from my phase 2 Japanese embroidery piece. You may recall that I mistakenly snipped that bunch of metal thread in half, creating lots of 18-inch segments. That's not the right method for Japanese embroidery (which requires very long threads), but I could easily use those shorter segments here. I used my phase 2 blue couching thread as well because I figured it would be nice to try it out here:

I like it a lot. My bricking needs a little practice, but this piece is nothing if not a practice piece, so it's a great spot to make minor mistakes and figure out how to do things differently for the future. I couldn't get the very center of this petal filled in — the silver thread just wouldn't fit another strand. But the tiny gap is only visible on a closeup shot like this. From six inches or farther away, it really isn't apparent.

And that's this flower element done! I'm really happy with how it turned out. It's very whimsical and full of variety. Here's a shot of everything I've done on the piece so far:

As you can see, there's just the top stem and pomegranate left to do. I'm on the home stretch! And I'm really pleased with how it's turning out. The color scheme thrills me, and I love the huge variety of threads and techniques. It really is a fun, cheerful piece. 

Alas, I can't swear I'll finish it anytime soon. My phase 2 JE piece is calling me to finish those cords, and I have another lesson this weekend to learn how to do the last fan segment and all the edges of the fan. But I do want to finish this piece because I want to use the Millennium frame for the Lorna Bateman ribbon embroidery kit I bought a couple of months ago. I'm really excited to start learning ribbon embroidery, so that will hopefully give me some motivation to complete this piece before too long.