Sew in Love

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: