Last time I posted about my Japanese embroidery, I had just finished stitching down all my shippo pattern pieces:
And I had come up with this color scheme to stitch them in:
I then marked the pattern pieces with a pencil to help me identify the weft direction more easily:
I used a set square to help me keep things even. Here is that step complete:
It was now time to start covering the pattern pieces with two strands of flat silk. This is generally known as superimposed work because you're stitching on top of another layer. I picked a color — the deep silvery periwinkle — and got started:
It's harder than you would think to maintain the correct angle of the stitches on this particular shape, and I admittedly struggled a bit. I had to keep taking out stitches. And then, if you please, the pattern pieces shifted during the process! Look at the top two purple shippos, and you can see they're out of alignment (alas, this photo is very blurry, but the issue is still visible):
Siiiiigh. I think the one to the right was stitched down at the wrong angle. But the one to the left definitely moved while I was stitching over it. However, I decided to leave them for the moment and move on to my second color, a lovely golden wheat shade:
And then on to the third color, the most beautifully vibrant turquoise:
I love the colors together and they really work for me in this pattern. But those two purple shippos being so obviously at the wrong angle bugged me too much. So I snipped out the stitching, replaced the shippos, and stitched them again:
They still shifted a tiny bit, but it was much better this time. As you can see above, I also kept going and stitched a few more shippos. I tried really hard on these ones not to let the paper pieces shift at all, and they do look better to me. So at least I'm making progress! But I have many, many more shippos to do.
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