It's been a while since I worked on my phase 4 piece. Partly that's because I've been getting my new house set up and dealing with two job changes, but it's also partly because it's goldwork. I love how goldwork looks, but it's not my favorite thing to do. I don't mind it at all in small fits and starts, but with an entire piece of it, my interest has been flagging.
Still, last weekend I attended JE lessons and wrapped up my first petal, which is also the largest one. That feels like something to celebrate. And I have pictures to show you!
You already saw my finished turnover for this front-and-center petal:
The next step was the round-and-round couching for the main part of the petal. I started at the top left of the petal with a pair of #4 silver metal threads and couched the pair down with white couching silk using a #2 needle:
I had to take out the padding on the right side so I could stitch this first pair directly over the printed line. (If you recall, I did all the padding in advance, which I should not have done, so I keep having to take it out and put it back. Live and learn.) Here are the first few rows stitched:
And that's basically all I did back around the end of January when I stopped stitching so I could focus all my attention on stressing out at work.
Sometime in March I did a couple more rows and put the padding back in along the right side:
But then at my JE lessons last weekend, I really got going:
I thought the left and right sides looked pretty good, but I was having a hard time keeping my corners on the top part—especially the middle corner. You can see it's already fading out at this point. By the time I'd gone a few more rows, it was completely gone:
I asked Mary Alice if I should start over, but she didn't think so. She said the corners all eventually go away so if one goes away a little sooner, it's not a huge deal. And since I'm using white thread, it's much less noticeable on this piece. She said it was more important to avoid gaps between the pairs of stitching as you go around. And as I was doing that beautifully, she thought I should continue. So I took a deep breath, reminded myself I'm still learning, and pressed on:
The petal was really starting to fill in by this stage, which meant it was going much more quickly. Huzzah! By the end of my second day's class, I had finished it and sunk the ends:
The last step was to remove the white cotton padding between the petal and the turnover. I was really glad I'd used the dark blue thread to hold the padding down because that made it infinitely easier to remove it. Here it is finished:
It's nice, but I wish the blue stood out more between the petal and turnover. If they'd had the blue fabric I originally requested, I think it would stand out better because I had picked a solid, somewhat darker blue. But the JEC no longer had that fabric and substituted this one, which, though a very lovely color, is lighter overall and much lighter in the center (it's variegated fabric), so it doesn't quite have the contrast I wanted. But oh well. It's still pretty.
And I'm very happy with the two corners at the top. That third corner in the middle should connect with one of the other corner lines, but instead it just fades out. I'll try to do all my corners more crisply on the next few petals. Anyway, there we are. Some good progress for this piece at last.
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