Phase 4: Progress on Petals and Turnovers

Where does the time go?! Mostly work, I find. And lately, multiple work trips have added to my general lack of time for blogging. But things have finally slowed down just a smidge at the office, so I am attempting to get back to it.

And I'm happy to report that I have actually been working on my Japanese embroidery again! It took me a while to work up the will to go back to my phase 4 piece, but I've been doing a little bit at a time and have made some good progress. Considering my previous speed at Japanese embroidery, you may be wondering what's holding me up with this one.

Phase 4 Karahana really is a beautiful piece, and I do enjoy seeing it come together. But when it comes to goldwork, the struggle is real for me. Partly it's that metal threads are fiddly things to work with; they like to strip at the most frustrating places and don't like to bend where you need them to. And partly it's that working on bright, shiny metallic designs in enough light to see what you're doing has a tendency to be rather blinding. 

This is actually a real problem for me. I'm hypersensitive to light and get migraines when exposed too long to glaring light sources. Which means I can only work on Karahana in short stretches. But my goal is to try to finish this piece sometime around New Years. Hopefully I'll have additional progress posts about it soon, so if you're interested in this one, please keep checking back.

Enough background, though. Let's start looking at how it's coming along!

If you recall from my last post about phase 4, I had just finished the first petal and started some of the turnovers for the other petals. I was working on the petal to the left of that center petal. I had already put in the cotton padding, but it was time to do the to-and-fro stitching over the top (for details on the process, see my previous post on the Petal Turnover). Here it is completed:


I think it looks all right. (This photo doesn't show it very well, but some of the others below provide a better view.) I still struggle to find joy in stitching these, but it's reasonably even, so yay. Then it was time to start the round-and-round couching for the petal part:


This was about the halfway point when I removed the cotton padding between the petal and the turnover. And here is that petal completed:


I actually think it looks reasonably nice in the context of the whole piece. So I pressed forward to the next petal to the left, starting with the turnover:


This was the tiniest turnover and a real headache to stitch, not gonna lie. But given the difficulty of doing a tricky stitch in this cramped space, I think it turned out pretty well. I was kind of on a roll with turnovers, so I just went and did the top right turnover as well:


(Technically, this is a deviation from the foreground to background rule, but since there's cotton padding separating the elements anyway, it doesn't matter as much.) This one was also in a small, awkward space and did not turn out terribly well, especially at the top. I ended up painstakingly pulling out the top third of the to-and-fro stitching. I'll have to restitch it later.

Anyway, after that disaster, I moved back to the far left petal and started on the round-and-round couching:


It can be hard to get a good photo that shows the true colors, but the one above is pretty close. And here is that petal completed:


The lighting for this photo kind of washed out the piece. But you can see it's really starting to come together. With the left side done, it was time to return to the petals on the right. In a burst of energy, I did two-thirds of the petal turnover on the petal to the right of the large center one.

And then all my enthusiasm for to-and-fro stitching and round-and-round couching petered out entirely and I couldn't bear to continue. So I decided to start working on the lower stem. I stitched this with a pair of #4 Majorica metal threads. Majorica is a variegated silver, brown, and copper thread:


I really like the color. I think it provides a nice contrast to all the silver, and I feel like elements of copper and brown work really well for a stem. (You can also see my partially finished turnover above the stem.) Here is the full stem complete in the context of the larger piece:


The photo is sadly a little washed out in spots, but I'm really starting to love how this piece is turning out. It gave me the motivation to finish that last leaf turnover:


I think it looks pretty nice actually. And I will say these started going more smoothly for me after doing so many of them. It was at this point that I decided to rip out the top part of the upper turnover because I really think I can do better. I also started the round-and-round couching on the petal to the right of the center one:


And that's where I left off. I'm hoping to find some time to stitch this weekend, but with the holiday coming up and travel to prepare for, we'll see. 

But regardless, I should have some more progress worth showing in a couple of weeks. And I'll try to publish some posts on other projects I've been working on in the meantime. Wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving Day!


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