Lauren's Wedding Card etc

At the Knitting and Stitching Show, I had fun with a Rowandean 'make and take' piece again this year, having already decided to use it for a wedding card to go along with the dress panel and bellpull.

It was worked in about three sessions - two of them at the Show.  I did a bit, went off to look around again, then came back and did some more, then took it home to finish off.  Problem was that, as I'd left it in the hoop at the stand the first time I took a break, I forgot to take it out of the hoop when I was leaving the Show with it and, consequently, waltzed off with one of Katrina's hoops!  I realised what I'd done shortly afterwards and posted it back to her, so I hope she got it OK...

I didn't get any WIP shots this time, but here it is before and after the main fabric was trimmed to a heart shape and mounted onto a card.  As you can see, I chose a very different colour scheme from the last time I did one of these.

I love these little pieces and fully intend to do another one at this year's Show.

I needed to wrap the bellpull up somehow, but didn't want to roll it or risk it getting folded.  So, I cut a piece of purple card - the same cardstock as I'd used to mount the Rowandean piece on, and used that to support it.

The hanger hung comfortably over the back and I prepared and printed some care instructions to stick on the back of the cardboard too, so that the new owners know how to wash and iron it if ever needed, i.e.hand wash in cool water and press from the back onto a thick towel.

I found some terrific clear wrapping plastic at Wilko's instead of the usual patterned paper.

The last stage was to paint a plain, manilla A5 envelope with lilac metallic fabric paint (I don't have metallic regular stuff.  I don't paint much), put the card in that and then fasten them together with a little bit of double sided tape in between the two, and then attach this ribbon.

And that's the last of the African wedding series.  Hope you've enjoyed it.  It was nice doing three such very different pieces.  I felt I was able to give dear Lauren a little bit of everything. ♥☺♥

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2017

Wedding Dress Modesty Panel - final preparation stages

Here we are arrived at part six of the dress panel project - the penultimate instalment.

And. This. Part. Was. Scary.

Actually, the part that worried me most was, after removing the embroidery hoop, I needed to trim the excess stabilizer off and I was scared I would cut the net.  One misplaced snip and the whole thing could fray irretrievably.  Thankfully, that didn't happen and here you see it soaking in our bathroom washbasin.  After which, it came out just that little bit crumpled up.

It dried quite a bit flatter though. Phew!  It was mostly the silver threads twisting and turning.

I re-rinsed the piece to make sure that all the stabilizer was out of the net and the threads - the silk felt horrid whilst still full of half dissolved Romeo!  Once it had dried again and I'd finger flattened a fair number of the silver threads, I subjected it to the book treatment overnight as you can see here.

From the bottom up:
-Thick or well folded towel(s)
-Beaded piece upside down so that the beads and stitchery sink into the towel and don't get flattened themselves and ruin the piece
-Heavy books

You can also use this sort of method to iron beaded pieces (or those using thick threads and 3D stitches) and/or clothes.  Iron from the back onto a thick layer of towelling and you'll have a lovely result.  Here's the finish I got.  Not 100% straight, but more than straight enough and much better than the wet version above!

Here's the panel mounted on a piece of dark green A4 card and popped into a plastic pocket for protection on the next part of its adventure - flying over to Ghana.

This is where I bow out of this project and, next time, you can see Janet, the bride's mum, fitting the panel and some shots of the whole dress in action. ♥

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2017

Wedding Dress Modesty Panel - Beading and Embellishing

Part five today - the beads and jewel embellishments.

I'd never used pearl beads of this size before, or diamond-like sparklies either, so I wasn't really sure of myself here.

This first shot you might remember from the introductory post in this project series - it's from the dress proper and shows what sort of jewel trims it had, including the pearl beads in the small flowers and leaves.  Actually, I forgot to put them above the leaves in the end....  Just remembered that whilst writing this!

Here's the whole panel with the pearl beads added.

And a close up of my favourite section with just the beads on.

The dress proper had two different sizes of pearl beads, whereas I was working with just one, so I ended up adding more in later on to even things up a little in the central, large flower.

These are the sparklies I was given to work with from both top and bottom.  I'd never really seen anything like this before, especially not with a view to working with them.  As you can see, the back has an 'x' shaped finish and no visible attaching mechanism like beads have.  So, what I ended up doing was fastening the jewel to the embroidery by catching threads around the arms that hold the stone in the setting.  That worked very well

Finally for today we have a few shots of the final panel with the addition of the sparklies.  I loved these.  They ended up being realy quite easy to do and they just look great!  I was happy to add the leftovers to my stash. ☺  Wish I could think of something else to use them on now.  Couture 'commissions' aren't something I get every day, sadly!  Part of me rather likes the idea of working as an embroiderer in a big fashion house.

Here's the whole panel still in the hoop, just before being taken out and prepared for fitting.  More on that next time, on Monday.  Join me then! ☺♥

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2017

Wedding Dress Modesty Panel - More details on the silver work

 

Today I'm here with an extra instalment insterted in the dress panel story.  After the last post on the silver threads, Dima from the D1-D2 blog (go and check out her progress on the Alison Cole 'Pearl Butterfly' project, BTW.  It's beautiful!) left a comment asking how I dealt with the thread ends on the back of the panel.

Well, that made me realise that what I'd declared to be 'pretty self explanatory' was really nothing of the sort and that she probably wasn't the only one who was disappointed by my lack of detail.  I plead the excuse of having almost 20 blog posts to write in only 3 or 4 sessions and being a little too eager to get them all done and scheduled.... (blush).  Here I am today to redress the balance and explain how the silver threads were attached and fastened off at the back.  I found a few helpful 'in progress' photos too. ☺

Basically, once I'd gone around the four larger flower motifs, (which were easy to deal with given the heavy embroidery I could fasten off to at the back), there were two ways of dealing with the long stems and smaller motifs: with two pieces of thread running largely in parallel, or with one doubled over the whole length.

These first three photos show part of the process of working a two parallel lengths section.  What that means is that I cut two lengths of Kreinik Japan #7, not necessarily to the same lengths, and worked them alongside each other part of the way, separating for the single lines around any motifs that fell into their paths.

I started by plunging both ends under a large motif where they could be fastened off easily on the back, then couched them down with one stitch across both threads until it was time to diverge them to outline small flower and leaf motifs.

In this third shot you can see the two ends re-converging ready to be couched back down in the original one stitch way and then plunged under the big flower and fastened off there.  I had to use my tweezers quite a lot to help the thread to settle in the right direction.

As you can see from this section, it wasn't always a simple task.  The long diagonal stem, with the motifs under it AND the stem with the heart, the flower it joins into on the right and the snaky-shaped trailing stem end underneath that flower are all one section!  The piece for the lower part needed to be quite a bit longer than the top one as it had to cater for the triple flower and leaf section.

Actually, I can't remember exactly where this piece ends, but it looks like the trailing end was worked with one piece laid double and then continuing out to the heart stem.  I'm thinking the ends are safely couched under either the heart or the flower.  I can't recall at this distance of time - I did this back in November!  It may even have been at the base of the snaky trailing bit, where it joins the flower.  I've no pictures of the back of the work, so I can't check now.

The other way of working the silver outlining was to use one long piece doubled over.  These two segments here were done with this method.

The thread was bent in either half, or as near to half as the diverging motifs allowed and started at an edge on the motif furthest out from the large flower.  On each of these, I probably (or should have!!!) started near the base of the leaf or flower, worked all around it, then begun the one stitch over two threads method until I was able to plunge the ends under a larger motif again.

Basically the same thing applied when working something with a trailing end of stem as in the two sections seen below.  With these, I 'tweezed' the Japan thread closely together and, after putting in one securing stitch over the very end of the fold, set off with the over-two couching stitches.  The right hand motif was done by bending one piece roughly in half, whilst the left hand design needed a rather longer 'lower' part so as to take in the other trailing stem - again worked by doubling up.

I hope that makes some sense at least!  I was flummoxed by some sections and had to think about the best way to do them so as to neither leave any ends showing through the net, nor scratch the poor bride to death!  I also didn't want any doubling over back under the threads as it would probably offend on both counts.

I apologise for the 'cast' on some of the photos.  Much of that came from the fact that there was a layer of reflective water soluble stabilizer underneath and was pretty hard to work around at times, photographically speaking.

The beads and jewel embellishments follow on Friday.  Join me then! ☺

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2017

Wedding Dress Modesty Panel - Silver Threads

Time for part three of this project and stage three - working the silver outlines and stems.

As is true of many embroiderers, my go to metallic thread brand is almost always Kreinik.  It's pretty rare that they don't have what I need and I have a good supply of their threads in stock.  Japan Threads #1, 5 and 7 were perfect for this project.  I used #5 to work the larger flower centres and #7 matched the silver work on the dress exactly.  I used #1 as a couching thread. I just needed to take care to make sure that each couching stitch went over a net thread or else it would be useless in holding the Japan #7 thread down once the stabilizer was dissolved.

Here are a few photos showing progress though the piece.  They're self explanatory really, so minimal text today. ☺

The light was reflecting to beautifully off the silk flowers and the silver metallic thread, so I had to take this shot and try to capture at least some of it.  Those of you who've seen this kind of work in the 'flesh' will know just how limited even the best photography is, but it gives a good idea.

I was posting regular updates on Instagram and was delighted around about this stage to know I was definitely on the right track as I got the comment "I love love love it!" from the bride. ♥

I had wanted to have a gap in the silver thread above the 3-leaf section just either side of the top centre and put jewels in the gap, but it would have been too hard to sink to the end without being very visible, so I re-jigged it to put the jewels either side of a line instead,

By this point, it was already beginning to look quite complete, but there were still two more types of trim to add.  More on that next time.

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2017

Wedding Dress Modesty Panel - Cream silk stitching

Welcome to part two of the wedding dress panel series.  Today we're looking at the creation of the basic satin stitched flower and leaf motifs. I had a couple of kind comments on the stitchery from the last post, but I only showed photos of the embroidery and embellishments on the dress proper, i.e. not my work at all. Sorry for any confusion there, it seems I wasn't sufficiently clear. From now on, all the work is mine! 

To be honest, a lot of them were not worked terribly well, especially not the smaller flowers, which weren't that easy to create.  However, I wasn't too worried about that as I knew the dodgy parts would be covered by outlining and beads, so I could get away with working a few flowers before finding the best method.  Above you can see all the small motifs done - a first milestone, then below a detail shot of one part once the first of that medium flowers was complete.

It was at the point in the 3rd photo that I ran out of thread!  I'd badly underestimated the amount of silk needed and thought that what I had in stock would do.  It didn't - not nearly!

The next part of the drama was to source a supplier who didn't charge the earth for shipping and would do so quickly, so not Barnyarns this time, but Silken Strands - a small, family business based in Wales.  Highly recommended for speed of service and reasonable postage costs.  I confess to having enjoyed 24 hours off the project to catch up with some other tasks whilst the threads arrived ☺

Drama stage three was receiving the threads (I bought two packs to be sure of having enough!) and finding that they were a whole shade lighter than the original one I'd had a few years!  Possibly it had darkened in storage.  Anyway, Janet and I agreed that, in view of the timing, it was more important to carry straight on and hope it wouldn't show later on than to try and source another shade.  Those of you who are, like me, very sensitive to nuances of colour (and have good screen resolution) may be able to see where one shade ends and the second began.  It was clearer in real life and screamed almost painfully at me....

, 

You can see the colour difference again here in this close up, but it fades into less significance when the whole lot of the silk work is done.  To be honest, that colour change was the only real disappointment to me in this project.

That's it for this time.  Next time I'll be taking you on a tour of the silver work parts.

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2017

Wedding Dress Modesty Panel - design and sampling

Here's the project many readers have been waiting to read more about - the wedding dress modesty panel.  Today's introductory instalment covers the purpose, design and transfer of the project and is the first in a series of seven posts.

My lovely young friend, Lauren, has been living mostly in Ghana for the last couple of years and, as often happens, met and fell in love with a nice, local chap. ☺♥☻ Their wedding date was set for mid December and she bought both of their wedding outfits on a long trip back to the UK.

However, there was a small problem with the bridal dress - it's a bit low at the back.  By European standards, it was pretty decent, with the back finishing around about bra level, but by Ghanaian standards, it was too low for polite company.  To quote the bride, "You can flash your boobs any day of the week, but one flash of a woman's back....!"  So, in order to avoid offending local cultural sensibilities, Lauren sent me this photo of the needed 'addition' and asked me if I could help out with some embroidery to make it look like it was part of the dress.  I quite liked the idea of the challenge and hopped on a train over to her parents' place in Halifax clutching my art box which I'd refilled with white, cream and silver threads of all types.

Here I am determining the size and shape of the panel - running carefully around the edge with some red sewing cotton and a tapestry needle so as not to jab into her!

After lots of holding up threads against the stitchery on the dress (which seemed to have been done in machine rayon and silver Jap style thread, then hand embellished), and then trialling some on some scrap net pieces, these are the threads that matched best with the original materials and survived the necessary work process.

I worked a couple of small samples, this one trialling a couple of different Madeira shades - ecru/2404 and off white, and also trying out some of the beads and sparklies Lauren and her mum, Janet - an accomplished seamstress, had bought in for the project.  You might also notice a sort of 'haze' on this photo, as if there were a plastic bag or something underneath the net.  Well, in a way there is, as I had to used Romeo water soluble stabilizer to work this piece.  The net is quite fine, but nothing like fine enough to be able to hand work enough stitches on easily.  Stabilizer provided the perfect solution.  Once the stitchery is complete, you just rinse it out well.

Naturally, I took a lot of photos of the embroidery design on the dress and here are some of the details from those pictures.  I used these not only to create a suitable pattern using motifs as close as possible to the originals, but also to get more of an insight into how they were worked and how best to set about it myself. NB These 3 photos are from the dress proper and are not my work.

After looking at it for a while, I traced around the edge of the panel and began to put together a design idea trying to make it look as 'at home' as possible.  I'd been told not to worry as Lauren's hair would cover it much of the time and it just needed to give an idea, but, hey, this is me!  It had to be spot on, right?? ☺

Here it is set up in the hoop after the tricky task of tracing the outlines onto the net using a fine black biro.  You can clearly see the stabilizer here and also that I tacked along the top and bottom of the panel to keep it still.  Given that the net's just that little bit stretchy, I had to be very careful not to have it held taut in the hoop, but to sit as it would in the dress.  The Romeo 'fabric' acted as a stabiliser in that sense too.

Next time I'll show you the first stage of the stitching - the ecru silk flowers and leaf motifs.

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2017

Wedding pillow - stitching the lavender and greenery

Part two of the wedding pillow piece coming up......

I decided to start with the sprig of lavender as I thought it would be the most bitty and also, in a way, the most challenging to stitch.  The rest would be needle-stroke heavy (i.e. time consuming), but this was the part I was most uncertain of.

I started with the blue and purple flower section and used the A-Z book I mentioned last time and my own colour plan as guides.  Working to a smaller scale, I had to simplify somewhat, but it worked out ok in one shade of purply blue: Flax Blue, two bluey purples: Pansy and Pale Pansy, and one light, reddish purple: Crocus.

The greenery was worked in two shades of green: Pastel Green and Peppermint, and a tiny bit of brown: Mid Brown was added at the bottom.

The next part was the rosebud and I went for the sepals and stem before the petal section.

Greens were a bit of a problem as, whilst I have more greens than any other single colour in my Pipers Silks box, there are still nowhere near enough to get the shades right.  There are only about 21 greens as opposed to about 80 in my stranded cotton collection!  As far as I can discern now (I neglected to take colour notes at the time), I used seven shades: Leaf, Pale Leaf, Fir Green, Dark Green, Pale Olive, Muscat and Bronze Gold

These green parts were a lot trickier and more time consuming than I'd expected, especially with the tiny touches of Dark Terracotta and Dark Cerise around the edges which, if I'd honest, hid a multitude of uneven edges!!

It was much the same story with the open rose greenery.  I did the stem first and then completely forgot the thread-painting rule of working back to front and did the sepals before the leaves.  I think I was on a 'finish with this colour' role and just forgot how important it is to observe that working method if you don't want problems with abutting edges later on.

Would you believe that the lower leaf here took two hours to work?  TWO HOURS!!

In this photo you can see how incongruous some of the greens really are - especially the stems. =(  It didn't look too bad as a whole, but the rose greens are really too lurid to be realistic.  I was very tempted to order some more shades, but not only did I remember that I am NOT buying any more threads - 1632 is more than enough - but also that I was working under time pressure and couldn't really wait several days for the order to arrive, so I escaped an illicit thread splurge!

Here's the whole piece as I ended it that day having made a small start on the back petals of the rosebud.  More on the roses next week and on my baby projects over the weekend.

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2016

Designing and preparing to stitch a souvenir wedding pillow

If you've been following me on Instagram, you'll have seen this whole project through to completion, but, as it was a rush job, I didn't have time to blog it until now.  IG is great as a whole post can be done in just one or two minutes, although the picture quality often isn't so good and the editing features are limited.

Less yadder, more project.

An old chum is getting married down in London next weekend and I wanted to make him a little something to mark his big day.  I usually ask my friend(s) whether they would like a ring cushion, a wedding sampler sort of thing or something for their home (usually a scatter cushion cover).  I had an idea of a sort of sampler for this couple as the groom's mum had told me that they already had a ring cushion, so I asked her to run it past them.  I got a very useful design brief in return, that they'd like a wedding souvenir cushion, even if only a small one, with white roses, their initials and the date on, and could they have a sprig of lavender too?

I used the open rose and rosebud from Trish Burr's 'Long and Short Stitch Embroidery - A Collection of Flowers' and remembered that there was a lavender piece in 'The A-Z of Thread Painting'.  I traced them, scanned the tracings, resized them and printed them out along with some letters and numbers using a nice font in MS Word (here showing the 28 05 bit accidentally printed out in italic!!)  Each element was cut out and tried in various combinations in a square outline.

Then it was time to move on to colour selection.  I love this part of the process as I adore colour and getting just the right shade is important to me.  Here you can see me with my Anchor colour chart, bags of DMC stranded and a white rosebud photo on my tablet to help me adapt the pinks from the book designs to the needed white (which is to be their main wedding flower).  You can also see my new work area in this shot.

The next stage was to decide which colour was to go where on the thread painted elements, so I made some more copies of the flowers and planned out the shadings.

Following on from that was the tracing of the design onto this lovely lilac and light brown shot silk.

As you can see, I have zero fancy equipment.  Apart from the fact that I have no room to store it, I resent spending money on a specialist item when things that I already have to hand will do just as well.  I frequently use a window as a light box.  In this case, I pinned the tracing (which I'd made good and dark) to the back of the fabric, then taped the whole thing to the window so that it didn't slip during the process.  The pattern was drawn on the fabric using a 0.3mm black biro that I got in Taiwan.

Once the fabric was in the hoop and ready to start stitching, I began to feel that, not only was stranded cotton a little 'large' for the size of the design (the whole thing would be a square with 7"/22cm sides), but that I wanted more sheen.  So, the choice was clear - switch to Piper's Silks.  Each strand is about the same gauge as one of sewing cotton, so about half that of a strand of regular embroidery floss.

I have over 500 shades of stranded cotton, and only 117 of Piper's Silk, so I found my colour choices a little more limited, but, as usual, this only seemed to matter when it came to greens and neutrals.  Funny how other colours can seem to substitute for near shades quite well, but greens, browns and greys always have to be right.  I have 50% again as many greens as most other shades, but still had to make do somewhat.  I nearly ordered some more, but remembered my crafts No Buy in time!!!  I'd also have had to buy more storage for them, which wouldn't have been good.  I also could foresee a saving in stitching time as there's only one 'white' in Piper's, but two in Anchor!!

Next post on this project will show the working of the lavender and the rose greenery.  Hope you like the look of this piece so far! =)

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2016