I will confess that I found the fan rib lines one of the most tedious and frustrating parts of this fan. They’re fiddly, finicky, and easy to royally screw up. I stripped my copper thread about fifty times and had to redo segments over and over again, and the lines are still not as straight or clean looking as I would like them to be. But I just can’t. bear. it. anymore. So I’m calling them done, and they will simply have to be good enough for this fan.
Here’s the first fan rib done with a pair of #4 copper threads, couched down at not-quite-3mm intervals in teal couching silk:
It doesn’t look too bad. But this one was decently long, which made it easier. On shorter segments, things got trickier. Sinking each end was particularly fraught because it was hard to get the angle of the line exactly right, and if I tugged too hard, the threads would pull too far and the copper would strip off the core. Here’s a nice glimpse of this terrifying step:
It looks deceptively easy, but with these short lengths, the metal threads just aren’t held very securely under the couching, and they slip so easily.Another issue I had was that I followed the pattern lines printed on the fabric, but some of them didn’t extend across the full space available, like the short one second from the right:
That copper line starts well below the leaf above and ends well above the leaf below. I realized too late that most of the rib lines cover all the white space available, so I had to redo the ones that didn’t and extend them the full length:
Then there were the really tricky spots with lines that were only 3–5mm long because they were interrupted by paulownia buds and stems, like these short segments on the right-most copper line:
As you can see, sometimes I could fit only one couching stitch, which made the metal threads even more likely to slip and become stripped. I had to redo every segment of this particular line three times. Sigh.
Here is the upper set of lines when I first completed it (I had to go back later—more on that below):
They look a little better from this distance, but they still didn't look consistent to me. I couldn't figure out what was bugging me, so I decided to keep going.
The lower threads were meant to look tapered, so I did only one strand of the copper thread for them:
These were easier to manage than the upper lines with the pair of strands, but I did still strip a few. Here are the lower ones done as well:
After looking at my rib lines for a while, I realized why they didn't look consistent. Some lines continue through the paulownia bud and stem areas, and some don't. To make them consistent, I'd need to continue all of them through the bud/stem areas. But that would mean many more short, fiddly little segments to stitch. It took me a full day to work up the motivation, but I went back and added small lengths to sections that weren't marked on the pattern but could accommodate the metal threads, like these two on the left:
They were wretched to do because of how short the segments were, and I had to do most of them a few times because I kept stripping the metal thread or sinking the end in slightly the wrong spot and ruining the angle of the line. Here's another one on the right of the picture with three itty-bitty segments that I added below the top segment:
As tedious as these were, I do think the lines look more complete and consistent, so I’m glad I went to the extra effort. But my fan ribs all wave and wobble a bit, and I wish I could have gotten them nice and straight. But having redone them so many times, I just had to accept that this was the best I could do for now. And really, they don’t look bad from a bit more distance. My photos are so zoomed in that they tend to emphasize the flaws, which are much less noticeable in person. But I'm glad this part is over!
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