The Life-Cycle of a Stumpwork Strawberry!

I've just completed my 89th piece of needlework - a card featuring stumpwork strawberries with some goldwork bits too. Here's how it was done:

This is the design process:

See a picture that inspires you in an embroidery magazine, but that you think could be improved upon.... Cut pieces of the rough shape and colour out of an unused mail-order catalogue, then play with positioning them on a piece of paper, drawing in the stems and an other extras with a biro. Then, take a drawing from that rough 'cut-out' mosaic. Colour in in the approximate colours you want to use.

Here are the materials: Anchor stranded cottons, #12 pearl cotton for the needlelace strawberries, #8 for the strawberry leaves, Anchor Ophir in gold for the strawberry pips, some bright check (gold chips), for the flower centre and some Needle Necessities Overdyed Kreinik #8 braid to be couched on for the stems.
The strawberries are first padded with two layers of red felt, then corded buttonhole stitch worked over that to produce a raise and textured effect. One done in close-up here:

Next came the silk shaded leaves done in three shades of warm green stranded cotton. (Not so many photos taken of further stages now.....) Now onto the flower. This was worked in white and pale yellow, again silk shaded according to the Royal School of Needlework tecnique - outline in split stitch, then work from the outside of the shape in in stitches of varying lengths, each layer over-lapping the previous one to some degree. The flower has gold chips as a centre!

Over-dyed Kreinik #8 braid was then couched on, which put some sparkle into otherwise rather dull stems. It was couched on with Kreinik blending filament in shade #015 so as to blend in as well as possible. Finally, after sinking and securing the ends of the couched braid, the tiny strawberry leaves were worked in two shades of #8 pearl cotton.

Here's the back of the completed work for curiosity's sake!!!









And the front once mounted into the card blank:

Piece #88!

Here's another hardanger card completed over the weekend. It's worked with Anchor Pearl Metallic #5 thread and Anchor Liana, which is actually crochet cotton with a metallic thread wrapped around it. It's a bit too thick to substitute for pearl cotton #8, but it was OK just for weaving. No good for lacey bits though, I don't think, unless the cut-out was really quite big.

This is my own design. It's meant to be a star as it's for someone I think it is a bit of a star in himself.=)

At last! Something to post......

Stitched two hardanger cards this week, so here are needlecraft pieces numbers 86 and 87.

Not too much more done on the Junk since the last update, (thus no new picture either....), but I hope to have a 'Martin Week' where I concentrate on doing stuff for him. That means getting the Junk picture as near to completion as possible and also getting the work I promised to do on his textbook project done, all being well.=)

Other than that, nothing interesting to report!

Getting there, getting there.....

Almost completed the bottom half of the Chinese Junk picture. The chart is in two halves so I thought I'd complete one half before moving on to the next. Gives a sense of achievement too! So, I'm pleased with progress this weekend as I'd set the target of only finishing the mid-blue on the bottom half, but I did that by Saturday evening and went on to do the pale blue as well as starting on the black scroll work. Should be all done this week.

No intellectual work done this weekend, but I didn't expect to. Plenty to do from today until Thursday though. I hope to have a few smaller things totally done and off the list. I counted 17 projects of both types altogether. 2 are finished, 3 are almost done and another 2 are in progress, so not bad! Of the others, 5 aren't really promised anyway and 2 others aren't urgent, so life is looking brighter and stress levels are coming down. It's working! Hurrah!=)

I decided to work on only one stitching project at a time, so the dog won't be coming out for walkies until the Junk is completed and away for framing. I'll be listening to the complete Pimsleur Mandarin course whilst working on the doggie, so I can resurrect/practice my Chinese at the same time. There are 45 hours worth of tapes altogether..... Multi-tasking rules, OK!