Remaining Flowers on Midori Purse

If you're following along in my progress, you'll recall that I'd completed two flowers on my Midori silk purse project, which meant I had two to go. I worked on the top petal first and stitched it in woven effect using teal 4→1 twisted silk and #1 silver metal thread. I won't go over the process in detail, but if you're interested, I've blogged about woven effect before, and the earlier post is very detailed.

First, I laid the initial foundation in silk, skipping every third row:

The I did the vertical stitches using a pair of #1 silver threads:

I anchored these down with white couching silk:

Then I laid the remaining foundation by filling in the rows I'd skipped before:

I anchored these rows down with a single strand of #1 silver thread (the paired thread you see in the photo below was for the following step):

I added outlines in a pair of #1 silver thread to separate the petal on the left:

I had initially planned to stitch the last flower in fuzzy effect, which can create a very elegant look:

But when I did the diagonal couching on top, the completed flower looked washed out and barely there:

I wasn't happy with it, so I picked it all out and redid this flower in a lattice work pattern, beginning with a periwinkle silk foundation using two strands of flat silk:

I added the grid pattern using a pair of #1 silver threads and couched down the corners with white couching silk:

Again, I won't explain this whole process, but if you want further details, you can see my other, more thorough blog post on lattice work. I was much happier with this bold color and pattern, so I was ready to complete the four stitched flowers. I outlined them all with a pair of #5 silver threads:

At this point, I was basically in love. The teals and periwinkles, with the silver and pale gold accents, on that gorgeous white silk just thrilled me. Admittedly, it may not be to everybody's taste, but I love it. And best of all, since I wear a lot of clothes in these colors, the purse will go with about 75% of my wardrobe when it's done.