Well, at long last I have finally finished the element on this fan that I was most worried about — the hanabishi flowers. These are tricky little suckers to stitch, and I received many a dire warning about them from my tutor and other Japanese embroidery students (they referred to them as hana-bitchy flowers 😂). But I persevered because I really love how they look.
Hanabishi flowers are unlike other flowers such as cherry or plum blossoms because you don't stitch them according to a pattern transferred onto the fabric. Instead, they are stitched by precise measurements, which is what makes them so difficult.
This is what the stitches in a hanabishi flower should look like:
There are two center stitches, which end about midway down the petal. The next two stitches to either side start just below the center two and extend the full length of the petal, toward the center of the flower. Then there are three stitches to either side of those; these begin a little below the previous two but gradually taper up the sides. The final stitches on either side are shorter than all the rest, to finish off the curve of the petal. The center is three stitches side by side (stitched over one padding stitch).
It's a really lovely shape, but getting those stitches all the right length and distance apart requires a lot of time and patience. Doing it superimposed over another foundation, as I was doing, adds another layer of difficulty. My plan was to scatter hanabishi flowers in some of the hexagons on my third and final cloud:
Not all the hexagons are full hexagons, which meant that at least some flowers would have to be partial flowers, further complicating the process. My tutor told me that four is an unlucky number in Japan, so I decided to do five flowers in the most complete hexagons available.
Since there's no pattern for these flowers, I had to figure out the right proportions and measurements myself, which was mostly a trial-and-error process. With all these factors to account for, I decided to practice on my end cloth before stitching on the actual cloud. My first attempt was so bad I didn't even bother taking a picture of it. Alas, my second attempt was also not glorious:
The ones on the left and right are too fat, and the one at the top has overly sharp edges. In part, my measurements and proportions were slightly off, but I also decided that it would be better to stitch these in one strand of flat silk (instead of two) to achieve a more delicate look. So after the first three dreadful petals, I adjusted the measurements and tried again on the final petal at the bottom in 1F silk. I actually thought this petal turned out pretty well, so I did a third flower, trying to duplicate that petal four times:
My measurements on the left petal were slightly off, so it's 1mm shorter than the other three, but overall, I think this flower looks much better. The shape is very nice, the stitching is smooth, and the petals are pretty even. In fact, I was encouraged enough by this attempt to begin stitching hanabishi flowers superimposed over my cloud foundation.
Since each hexagon was 2cm wide from flat side to flat side and slightly larger than that from point to point, I made my hanabishi flowers 1.5cm wide, so they wouldn't feel too cramped in the hexagons. Each petal was about 6mm long, with the center two stitches about 3.5mm long.
I started by putting in temporary guidelines across the hexagons with white couching thread:
These guidelines were just to make sure I had a line down the center of each petal. I only had to do it one direction because the equilateral triangle lines in my foundation provided guidelines in the other direction. Once that was done, I made tiny couching stitches to mark the tip of each petal and the top edge of the widest part of each petal, which were about 1mm apart:
The couching stitches are tricky to see, but perhaps you can tell where they are based on where the white couched guideline dips a little. This step isn't strictly necessary because you place stitches over these spots, but I decided to do it my first time to make sure everything was measured evenly.
Once that was done, I made one padding stitch at the tip of each flower, 1mm in width, and a second padding stitch at the top edge of the widest point, about 3.5mm in width:
The padding stitches provide a slight lift for the top edge of each petal, so I used two strands of flat silk for these. The following diagram shows where the padding stitches (in blue) go, so you can see how they act as a guideline for placing the flower stitches:
Then I switched back to one strand of flat silk to stitch the petals. And here is my first superimposed hanabishi flower in a soft periwinkle color:
I was pretty happy with the shape, but the vertical petals were almost parallel with the foundation, so they sank into it a little, despite the short-stitch holding. This made them look a little shorter than the other two petals, especially toward the center of the flower.
So on my next flower, this one stitched in pale green, I decided to stitch slightly longer stitches when stitching parallel to the foundation. I hoped they would then appear the right length, but once again, they sank into the foundation and looked just a little shorter:
On my third flower, I decided to do something a little different. The padding stitches at the top of each petal kept that edge from sinking into the foundation, so I decided to do tiny horizontal stitches (in 1F) as well to help hold the stitches up where there was no padding stitch, as shown by the small red lines in this diagram:
This worked much more effectively! You can see the vertical petals on my golden hanabishi flower appear a bit longer than on the previous flowers:
It turns out, this is an actual Japanese embroidery technique called a sleeper stitch. I found out at my last JE class that this is exactly how you handle this type of situation. I did two additional flowers this way and was reasonably pleased with how they turned out:
After looking at this a while, I decided the periwinkle color looked too lonely on only one flower, so I did another partial petal in that color in an incomplete hexagon near the center:
I'm happy with how these flowers turned out. They're so delicate and lovely. They aren't perfect, of course, but I spent about 2 hours on each flower, often redoing a single petal up to five times. In the end, I decided this was the best I could do at my current skill level. I mean, I can't spend the rest of my life on these hanabishi flowers. 😉
So for now, I'm satisfied. And this cloud is basically done, except for the border, but that comes at the very end. I need to finish the other tassel on this fan, and then it will be time to start the goldwork. I'm looking forward to that. Since I've done a fan blade in goldwork before, I'm hoping I have enough practice and experience to make this one turn out even better.
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