Tuesday 7 June 2011

A design's not final 'til the stitching's finished!

This was the design I initially created for friends' Silver Wedding (25th) anniversary card, to be worked in silver goldwork threads and Anchor Marlitt:


The changes started when I went to my LNS only to find that, although they stocked plenty of gold goldwork threads, their supply of silver was very low indeed. I wasn't able to get pearl purl and so had to adapt straight away to twist instead. I managed to get the silver kid leather, but when I tried to cut it out into the inner heart shape, the result was so creased and, frankly, cheap and nasty looking that I couldn't bear to use it. So, that bit got dumped too and I decided to move the trellis from over the purples, to filling the inner (now middle) heart. The tiny heart in the centre was to be filled with silver bright check purl.


However.... I noticed that the silver of the bright check was not as cool as the rest of the silver threads. In fact, it was relatively yellow. That bothered me, so I ditched that idea and decided to fill in the space with French knots in DMC metallic floss.


Above you can see the first stage of the purple shading completed and the second layer underway. The top right hand side ended up so un-even that, when I'd done the lot, I realised that, not only would I have to outline the inside of that section with Kreinik Fine Braid, but that I needed a line of it between the two purples as you can see below:


By this time I'd also decided that I wasn't going to fussing around adding in accents in pink Marlitt either!!

So, much changed from the original design, here is the finished item. It's a little puckered, sadly, but that came from my not getting the silk fabric totally flat on the backing cotton when I was sewing them together - a problem I've had before.=(


And here's a side view. Of course, it isn't possible from this angle for my camera to focus everything perfectly (so I had to cut the bottom section off!!), so the right hand side is a tad blurred, but I hope you like the effect all the same. All that remains now is to decide whether to mount it in a round or square aperture card.


So, although I haven't blogged my work for a fair few weeks, I have been stitching! This isn't all I've been doing either, there's more. I'll post about that in the days to come.

8 comments:

Carol R said...

Purple is my second most favorite color, and this heart is just divine.

Great job! It's beautiful!

Veronica said...

What a pretty heart. Love the purple and silver combination!

Cynthia Gilbreth said...

Very nice! I admire your courage as I absolutely refuse to use rayon threads. I'm generally a gold girl, but I do like the silver/purple combination.

Mounting is always a difficult decision. I've wondered what you have been up to.

Ninu said...

Love the design and how you implemented! very pretty!

Radka said...

Beautiful stitching, Elizabeth :)

Rachel said...

As you say, designs evolve as you work them. You started off with a more detailed idea of where you wanted to go than I ever do, and your earlier idea would have worked just as well, but it's much more fun to adapt to the available materials!

Anonymous said...

In spite of you having to alter the design on the fly, I think it's turned out beautifully. :o)

Rosali said...

Ha quedado muy bonito el corazón, saludos desde México.

 
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