Wisteria: Getting Started (Plus General Updates)

You may have noticed there has been quite a delay since my last post. I went back to work in September after taking some time off for health issues, and things have gotten very busy over the last couple of weeks. The last quarter is generally one of our busiest, which leaves me very little time or energy for stitching and even less for blogging. So the frequency of my posts will probably decrease somewhat over the next few months. But rest assured, I stitch whenever I can and will blog as time allows.

In recent weeks, I couldn't continue on my Hiogi piece because I had finished the shippo cloud and had to wait till my next lesson to learn some new techniques. However, I had JE lessons this past weekend, so expect some more Hiogi posts in the nearish future. 😊

All I really did recently was attempt to start my Wisteria piece. Spoiler alert: it didn't go well. 😂

The box chart said to outline the largest wisteria blossoms using cotton padding. I actually used buttonhole thread instead (at my tutor's suggestion) and didn't have any problems up to this point:


I thought my outlining looked pretty decent, so I decided to start stitching the uppermost blossom using two strands of flat silk in a pale lilac color:


Aaand, I hated it. It was way too thick, and that soft lilac color seemed too brown to me. So even though the box chart recommended two strands of flat silk, I decided to try this again using1.5 strands, in a pale lavender color this time:


The color was better, but that was about it. It still felt far too bulky to me. For a point of reference, here's what I was going for:


That is the original piece (as stitched by a JE master, I believe), and it looks much more elegant. After analyzing this picture for ages, I finally decided that they hadn't used any cotton padding on any of the blossoms. I checked with my tutor, and she agreed. She also thought that one strand of flat silk would probably be a much better fit for the size of these blossoms. They're tiny. Each blossom is smaller than my pinky nail, and I think the padding and multiple strands of flat silk just overwhelm them.

I haven't done any more work on this piece yet. I'm currently working on Hiogi since I learned a few new techniques this weekend. But when I go back to this piece, I will remove the cotton padding and try to stitch the blossoms again using one strand of flat silk. I'm hoping it will really help. That's all for now. Just wanted you to know I hadn't thrown in the towel completely. 😂




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