Phase 2: Round and Round Couching Completed (Part 3)

Miracle of miracles, I have finally completed the round and round couching. When I last posted about this segment, I had just gotten to the point where the circle at the bottom had closed up, so I could no longer couch into the circle and keep going round and round. 

This meant I had to start a new process called to-and-fro stitching to work around the V-shape that was created when the circle closed. This involves taking one strand farther into the V by itself and then turning it abruptly in the opposite direction and couching it down as a pair of threads.  The second strand then does the same thing, though not as far into the V, and the first thread joins up with it. But it's easier to see it in diagram form:

Step A is the usual couching of the pair of threads as they move towards the V. When things get too tight for four strands, only the outer strand continues into the V. First, you place a stitch at 1, coming in at the angle shown, which both secures the point and helps turn the thread back on itself. You have to give a pretty firm tug on the metal thread while holding that stitch down tightly to achieve a smooth turn. Then you place couching stitches over the doubled-up strands. I've shown two couching stitches, at 2 and 3, in the diagram, but it can be more than that in some cases. 

At the point where there's room for four strands, you place a stitch at 4 over the inner and outer strands of metal thread (at the same angle as the stitch at 1) to turn the corner and make a point with the inner thread. Then step B continues with couching down the pair as usual.

Here, I've made my first turn with the outer strand and am ready to turn the inner strand:

And here, I've turned both strands:

Here's what it looked like after I completed a few of these to-and-fro stitches:

To be honest, I don't think I went quite deep enough into the V on some of these. The gaps are a little bigger than I'd like. But I couldn't really redo it without having kinks at the places I'd initially turned the thread. That's one of the problems with round and round couching; you can't really start over midway through or the damage to the metal thread will show. So I just kept going and tried to improve as I went along.

Things went a little more quickly from this point because each round got smaller and smaller, and soon enough, I was almost ready to end it:

I followed the same pattern till I ran out of room and then just ended the threads one at a time and sank them.

Next, it was time to go back and fill in the circle at the bottom:

I used one of my cut threads (from the #5 silver I mistakenly cut) and put it on its own koma so that I could save the long, continuous threads on the other koma for a larger project. I started one thread of the pair at a time, about 4 or 5mm apart, and then couched round and round before ending them one at a time, about 2mm apart, and sinking the ends.

Here's the completed segment:

I know it has mistakes in it, but even from this distance, I don't think they're very noticeable. I think it looks pretty good! And when you see it with the whole fan, I think it's beautiful:

I am seriously loving this. 😊 And I've learned so much that, the next time I do this technique, I think I will be much better at it.

Now it's time to go back to those pesky cords. I thought there was only one left to do at the bottom, but I realized I did one of the far right cords in the wrong shade of lavender. 😒 The colors are very close, but it's not quite right, so I think I'm going to redo it. It's such a shame because I did some of my best stitching on that cord. Sigh. Oh well. Onwards and upwards.