It's been a while since I posted, but I have a very good reason for the delay. I went to Florida for a week to visit my dad over the holidays. 😊 It was my first time visiting Florida (he just moved there this summer), but I must say, it was beautiful. I just wanted to sit and take it all in, so we did:
Look at that view! This is technically a huge river, not the ocean. But we did also go to the ocean. In fact, we went to the beach every day, and I could not have been happier than when I was there:
I went paddle boarding on my dad's new SUP, swam in the ocean, and picked up seashells. Lots of seashells. Hundreds of seashells. Mostly ones with holes in them because I wanted to make a wind chime. But my dad insisted we could take ones without holes because he could drill holes in them with his old dental drill.
So I took him up on that. After drilling holes in about 100 seashells for me, I think he was really regretting coming up with this brilliant idea. 😂 Here's just a portion of the lovely shells I picked up on the Gulf coast:
It's not related to embroidery or lace, but when I get my wind chime finished, I may post a picture anyway because it's still crafty, and I'm hoping it will be enchanting.
Anyway, back to embroidery. I didn't do any embroidery in Florida (too much stuff to try to transport, and I didn't check a bag). But after I got back this weekend, I did do some work on my phase 3 piece. I didn't have time for much because my nephew's birthday party was the same day, but I completed the kikko pattern on my hanabishi cloud.
I won't go into the specifics of how I created the kikko pattern because I've blogged about it in detail before (see Kikko (Hexagon) Pattern, Part 1 and Kikko (Hexagon) Pattern, Part 2).
But like before, I started by creating equilateral triangles using 1-->1T silk in the same color as the foundation:
These triangles have 1cm sides because I wanted the hexagons to be 2cm in diameter, to allow enough room for the hanabishi flowers.
I then couched down the intersections of the triangles in the same color. But instead of going to the tedious trouble of making 1-->2T silk for my couching thread, I did what my tutor recommended and just used half a strand of flat silk and lightly twisted it while it was in the needle. This worked great and was so much easier. Here's a shot of the couched triangles:
Looks basically the same as the previous photo, but I assure you, those triangles are couched down in this one; it's just hard to distinguish stiches when everything is in the same color.
The final step was to create the kikko pattern. I used a pair of #1 copper threads, half-hitched on the needle to create my hexagons:
It's a subtler effect than I had originally planned for this cloud. But I hope once I get the hanabishi flowers in place, it will look more balanced. I may also do inner hexagons inside the hexagons where I don't do flowers. I'm thinking of doing three to five flowers, depending on how tricky they are.
Everyone in my JE class seemed to think I was crazy for willingly choosing to do them when I didn't have to, which probably means they're tough. 😂 But hey, what can I say? I like a challenge. And I wanted something unique for this fan.
My next lesson is this coming weekend, so I'm hoping to have some progress to show you about a week from now. Fingers crossed these hanabishi flowers go well!
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