Phase 3: Paulownia Stems

After I finished the paulownia buds last time, it was time to start the paulownia stems. I decided to use a very pale, slightly golden brown for these:

The color is only a subtle shade different from the pale gold I used for the buds. But I didn't want it to be distinctly different.

The thread for the stems needed to be a smooth karayori (signified by TT), which is a little tricky to make. I was doing a 3-->1TT, so I divided my thread so I had 1 1/2 strands for each side. I then did a soft twist on both of them:

Although the photo is a bit blurry, you can see the open loops of my softly undertwisted thread.

Next, I overtwisted my threads together very tightly:

Then I took a clean, damp cloth and ran it up and down the thread to wet it:

It made a bit of a squeaking sound when I did this. My dog Beau was not a fan. 😂 You can also use a damp sponge for this part. I let the thread set for one minute and then immediately stitched with it while it was still damp. I came up at the base of the first main stem and went down 1/3 of the way into the paulownia bud at the top:

Using a 1-->2T thread in the same color, I couched the stem down at about 2mm intervals:

I did the side stems the same way, but came up slightly underneath the main stem to start:

I then couched them down the same way as the main stem. Here are the stems after I finished and after the thread had dried:

You can see the thread has fluffed up a bit between the couching stitches, which is just what it's supposed to do. I really like the color. It's not quite as bright as the buds, a little more earthy in tone, but it's still very close. 

You can see I had to peel up the edges of my protective quilting paper to stitch the stems. It was fun to see the true colors again. But afterwards, I stitched the quilting paper back down to keep everything protected until I'm done.