It was a very busy week for me at work, so I didn't do any embroidery, but I started my ribbon embroidery kit last weekend and continued it this weekend, so I will show you a bit of my progress on that.
I began a little sampler piece a few weeks ago using the practice ribbons that came with my kit. Here it is completed:
It's nothing spectacular, but it gave me a good chance to try out various techniques. I was happy enough with my results, so last weekend, I started on the real piece.
The first step was to create the long stems, which I did by bringing the needle up and twirling the ribbon:
Once I was happy with the twists, I pulled the ribbon taut and began couching it down with cotton embroidery floss at regular intervals:
Here are the first two clumps completed:
I also attempted two leaves on the left clump, but I wasn't happy with them, so I ended up removing them.
I find stems a bit boring to do, so I moved on to creating some flowers after this. I started with the bluebells. These involve making an inverted stab stitch and putting a needle under the stitch to hold the edge square:
When the stitch is complete, the bottom edge is ruffly instead of pointed:
After each flower, I left the needle in until I had completed the following flower to make sure the square, ruffly edge stayed put. One of the most annoying things about ribbon embroidery is how easy it is to mess up the previous stitch by pulling a little too hard on the next stitch. I had to take out quite a few flowers that turned pointed when I accidentally pulled too hard on the next flower.
But eventually, I got all the bluebells put in, and I think they turned out pretty nicely:
The final step was to add the leaves:
These ones turned out much better than my first attempts. And overall, I'm pretty happy with how this little plant turned out.
After this, I moved on to the daffodil plant and started with the center cup on the main daffodil:
I made this by doing an inverted stab stitch with a square, ruffly edge (just like the bluebells) and then placing two inverted stab stitches on either side of it with pointy edges. I actually love how it turned out, though it was largely a happy accident.
Next, I added the white petals around it and on the other flowers using inverted stab stitches with pointy edges:
They're not all ideal, but they're the best I could do. I took them out a number of times but just could never get them quite flawless or perfectly spaced. As an aside, that little bud on the right was actually made with three straight stitches, one over the top of the other.
Next, I added the yellow centers for the top three flowers using three strands of cotton floss to make little clusters of French knots:
And finally, I added the leaves:
Not brilliant perhaps, but I think it looks pretty good for my first daffodil plant. And from a slightly more distanced perspective, it's really lovely:
But that said, I have to admit that I don't enjoy silk ribbon embroidery as much as I thought I would. Don't get me wrong — it's beautiful and enchanting, and I love how realistic and three-dimensional it is. It also comes together fairly quickly, which is nice.
But the silk ribbon is very fiddly to work with. If you tug even slightly too hard, you generally ruin the previous stitch, and there's no way to fix it except to cut it out and start over. The silk ribbon is also quite fragile, so you can easily damage it if you're not careful. I work in pretty short lengths for that reason — anywhere from 6 to 12 inches.
I will finish this kit because it's a lovely design, and I really want to complete one ribbon embroidery piece. But I will probably not do much more ribbon embroidery after this — at least not anytime soon.
What I really want to be working on is my Japanese embroidery, and I found out Mary Alice shipped the supplies this weekend, so my phase 3 and practice pieces should be here this week! I can't wait to show you!
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