I've been working on the braided cords on my fan for a couple of weeks but haven't really had any progress to show till now. The reason for that is braided cords are hard. I redid the first one-inch segment about six times. The particular cord I'm doing is called single central braided cord. And judging by other Japanese embroiderers' blogs, I'm not the only one who finds this particular technique a struggle.
Here's a nice example of how this braided cord can go horribly wrong:
That's not the only way it can go wrong, but I think that one was my worst attempt. 😂
Fortunately, I've made friends with other Japanese embroiderers and one of them, Dima, gave me some helpful tips. In the picture above, the left edge is horribly uneven. Dima's tip for fixing this was to make sure that my Japanese running stitch guideline on that side was really stable by using very tiny stitches.
When I first put these guidelines in, I used pretty big stitches, like easily 3 to 4mm in length:
So I took them out and redid them using about 1.5mm stitches:
As you can see, these stitches are much smaller and tighter, which creates a firmer edge. I also went back later and stitched a central line down each cord so I could see where my diamonds should line up. With a stronger edge in place, I started again. I'll explain the basic process, but fair warning: it's involved.
I began by placing four diagonal stitches across the cord (I'm using dark teal 4-->1 twisted silk):
These stitches should generally be 8-9mm in length. I've heard both 8mm and 9mm, so I went with 8.5mm, but I think the most important thing is that these stitches be consistent in length so that you always have the correct angle.
Next, I placed four cross stitches over them almost perpendicularly:
Some guides suggested an exact 90-degree angle, but I found this didn't work very well for me — possibly because my cords are curved. Another guideline said that 80-85 degrees was better. As I continued on, particularly as the cord began to curve more, I found that 80 degrees was about right. The stitches have to be longer than you think because you don't want them to pull the first four stitches out of their original alignment.
Once this step was done, I placed the next four diagonal stitches across the cord:
They covered up the edges of the cross stitches. This angle of this photo is off, but I was measuring for 8.5mm. I didn't measure every stitch, but I did measure about every second or third one.
After this step, I went back to the beginning to cover up the other side of the cross stitches with more diagonals:
Then cross stitches had to be added over these diagonals. This was really tricky because I was right at the edge. In fact, I think I was too close to the edge; there should be a slight gap there for the goldwork border, so I will probably go back and redo this a bit. But just for now, you can see the step:
Not perfect, but better than it was the first five times. I then added a couple of tiny stitches to finish off the upper left corner. I also added the next set of cross stitches by coming up below the four stitches, stitching over them, and taking the needle down underneath the set of four diagonals just above:
From there, I continued on in the same pattern — four diagonals and then four cross stitches over them:
At this point, I realized I had started on the wrong cord entirely. 😂 This cord is actually the one farthest in the background on this side of the fan, so it should be done last. Soooo I stopped working on it and moved on to the cord in the foreground, which I stitched in light wheat 4-->1 twisted silk:
I was pretty pleased with this one. It already looked like an improvement. I felt like I was finally starting to get into a good rhythm, so I decided now was as good a time as ever to introduce a color change.
For this cord, I blended light wheat and dark wheat into a 4-->1 strand by undertwisting one length of each color into half a strand, doing that again, and then overtwisting the two undertwisted strands together. So the light wheat was my color A, the blended color was my AB, and the dark wheat was my color B. I used the pattern below to blend from A into AB and then from AB into B:
For the first blend from A into AB, I did one diagonal stitch in AB and then three in A . Then I did two cross stitches in AB and two in A. Then I did three diagonal stitches in AB and one in A and then four cross stitches in AB. Then I did a whole set and a half of stitches in AB:
For the second blend from AB into B, I did one cross stitch in B and three in AB. Then I did two diagonal stitches in B and two in AB, followed by three cross stitches in B and one in AB. From there, I used only color B and continued on as usual:
I think it made a nice smooth transition — very subtle and gradual — and I was really pleased with it. Here is this cord segment completed:
Again, it's too close to the edges at the top where it meets the fan, but I can go back and adjust that. The most important thing is I've actually completed a cord, and it looks pretty consistent! I know it's not perfect, but I'm just so stoked to have achieved even this level of quality. My first attempts were ... not pretty. This is major progress, people! 😂 And I have five more cord segments to do, so I'll probably get even better as I go on. Dima kept reminding me that, technically, this is a practice piece for learning on.
So that's my update about cords. On my phase 2 piece, I also showed how much of the fan was done at the end of each post so you could see my overall progress, but since I'm covering up each segment as I stitch it to make sure it stays neat, that's a little trickier this time. Still, I thought you might like a glimpse of it, even with the quilting paper over most of it:
I think it's really coming along. I've been working on it about four and a half months at this point. That's about how long phase 2 took me altogether, so this piece is definitely more involved and challenging. But it's also more fun because there are so many interesting techniques and my skill level is a little better this time.I'm loving the colors as well. I know, I know, they're not traditional Japanese colors. But I'm not a traditional or Japanese person, so I can live with that. 😉
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