Phase 3: Goldwork

I'm back! I don't usually go this long between posts, but after I returned from my trip to Florida, I came down with severe vertigo, which prevented my embroidering for a while. I still have vertigo, but it's more manageable. Also, I was doing the goldwork on this piece, and I wanted to do one post about that entire segment, which meant I had to finish it first. And alas, goldwork just takes a really long time.

But I am happy to report that I have finished the goldwork segment of the fan and can now report on it! This segment was fairly similar to the goldwork I did on my phase 2 piece, so I won't give a ton of details because you can see my previous posts, Round and Round Couching, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 for a lot of the details. In this post, I'll just describe what I did differently.

To begin with, I started my round and round couching on the side of the fan blade closest to the rest of the fan, in the corner where the round part meets the long part:

And then I worked in a clockwise manner as usual, couching down the pair of copper threads with perpendicular couching stitches in teal silk, every 2.5mm. The main difference on this project was I had to go around the grommet where the cords come through:

It was a little tricky to go around this shape. I had to adjust my bricked couching stitches at times to add a stitch or two. Otherwise, the copper threads would have gapped around the curves.

After a few rounds, the copper threads filled in the space next to the grommet:

At this point, I continued my round and round couching in just the upper portion, using the to-and-fro technique described in Part 3 of my previous posts to go into the V-shaped area:

Here's how it looked after a few to-and-fros:

The left side, as you can see, also ended up forming a V, and I did to-and-fro stitching there as well. Once I filled in that section, I snipped and sank the ends. Here's that part complete:

Next, I had to start new threads along the top of the grommet, in the V-shaped area, so I could continue my round and round couching for the rest of the fan blade:

I waited till I had gone down the first long side on the left and then came back and sank my ends in the V using my special sinking needle:

Then I continued my round and round couching. One thing I'm happy to report on is that on this piece, I finally figured out how to do the circle at the base. I worked very hard to achieve right angles where the circular base meets the blade:

It's not quite flawless, but it's pretty good. Admittedly, I had to somewhat ignore the printed line, but keeping right angles really helped keep the stitching in this area circular, rather than oval, as it was on my phase 2 piece.

And from there, I just kept plugging away until I filled in the gap and could no longer stitch down into the circular area:

At this point, I had to do more to-and-fro stitching into the V and just gradually fill in this middle section:

Once I filled in the space, I snipped and sank the ends:

Here's another view of that section completed:

Then it was time to go back to the circle at the bottom, start a new pair of copper threads (staggering them slightly), and begin filling in the circle:

Even though this shape was very circular this time, it was still quite difficult to fill in nicely. While couching, I had to really try to place my needle under the row of previous stitches to help keep the pair as close as possible to the previous row:

There are still some slight gaps between the rows in certain areas, but they're smaller and less noticeable on this piece than on my phase 2 piece, so I consider that progress. Here's the fan blade after I sank the ends on the circular part:

The last step was to stitch a pair down over each of the two lines at the bottom. I staggered the ends of each pair at the bottom and couched down the full line before sinking all the ends:

Where the lines meet the fan blade, I sank them right next to each other and then put another couching stitch over them to keep everything neat.

The first time I did these lines, my dad called midway through, so I put him on speaker and tried to keep going because I was on a roll. But talking to him was fairly distracting, and I forgot to hold the starting ends while sinking the other ends. When I pulled the ends through to the back side, the metal threads slipped and shifted under the couching stitches, which stripped the copper metal off the yellow core. Ugh. I had to take it all out and redo it. Sigh. You really do need to concentrate fully when doing Japanese embroidery.

But I redid the lines after I ended the call, and they turned out fine the second time. Here's the entire fan blade completed:

I think it's lovely. I adore the bright copper color. And next to the teal, it really sings. 

Now that the goldwork is complete, I am officially done with all the major portions of this piece. I can't wait to start taking off the quilting paper and doing the final touches. I just have the leaf and cloud borders and the fan outlines to do. 

I'm hoping to start the borders soon, but I have to make katayori thread for those, and it's extremely tricky. I've been working on it, but not being able to see in person what it's supposed to look like makes achieving it fairly difficult. But that is a tale for another post.😊