Autumn Leaves Wedding Pillow - Numbering and Metallic Leaf Flecks

This is where we left off in part four of this series, the completed silk thread painting.  Part five takes a brief look at the metallic work.  I say brief as I, sadly, didn't take many WIP photos during this part.

I love metallic touches in my pieces and am a big fan of Kreinik threads.  The numbering was done in copper coloured #8 fine braid in shade 021C, couched down with cord shade 021C.

Numerals complete and time to add a few metallic flecks to the leaves.  These were the threads I chose from my collection of Kreinik Cords:

At this point, the piece is still in the hoop.  Part six, next time, will showcase the completed little cushion/pillow.

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2017

Autumn Leaves Wedding Pillow - Leaf 5 and Complete Sprig

Welcome to part four and we start with part of the outlining of the fifth leaf (and some lovely sheen on the silk threads).

This was the last section of thread painting on this project and here are a few shots of how it was done.

Not much out of the ordinary to report this time, except the usual working and re-working of the leaf veins.  I don't miss that, I can tell you!! ☻

Next time we add the metallic parts.

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2017

Work in Progress Wednesday - 25 Jan 2017

It's been a long time since I did a 'Work in Progress Wednesday' post, but I'd like to get back into it.  I really miss Sharon Boggon running it as a weekly challenge/link up event.  If you're reading this, Sharon, there are still people doing WIPW posts and I'm sure they'd love to join up with you again.  So, if you ever wanted to re-start it, you'd have some interest.  I always found it very helpful and I completed a number of stalled and slow projects in order to join in.☺

I last posted on this piece right at the beginning of last year, so here's a recap.  Fellow fans of Trish Burr's work and books may recognise this little violet embroidery from her 'Fresh Ideas for Beginners' needle painting book, which I'm slowly working through some of the projects from.  I first blogged my first - terrible - attempts at the bud back on 11 November 2015 and the last photo on blog was the one here with the part worked leaf.

Here's the leaf completed

I have since worked the purple parts of the bud again, but didn't realise that I hadn't photographed it yet.  My camera battery door is broken and I'm having to make do with holding it together with a combination of duct tape and main force when I need to take decent pictures, pending Sir having a look at some of the on-line tutes there are for fixing the problem.  I really don't want to bin my otherwise fully functional camera because of such a small, mend-able problem, but it does mean that I find taking just one more shot when I thought I'd done and uploaded them all a bit of a nuisance.

I've just finished a moderate revamp of this blog.  I changed some text colours, deleted some out of date sidebar stuff and finally got around to staging and photographing a new header image.  I'm not 100% happy with it, but it'll do for the time being.  The next digital skill I want to develop is banner and logo creation.  If anyone has any tips to do this cheaply - preferably free - please share!  I have Photoshop Elements v2.0 from about 15 years ago, MS Publisher 2007 and that's about it for creative software.

More on the autumn leaves project coming up on Friday.  I have 12 past project posts created and scheduled for publication between then and early March and there are still three to do.  Plenty to read on Sew in Love coming up!  Enjoy. ♥☺♥

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2017

Autumn Leaves Wedding Pillow - Leaves 3 & 4

Welcome to the third part of this project series.  Today we'll take a simple photographic journey through the creation of the third and fourth leaves.

With the vein gauge sorted, it was time to move on to shading the next couple of leaves, both of which were green based.

I wasn't happy with the leaf veins on the the third one either - too straight.  It was rather hard to get them sorted though, and I'm not sure I cracked it in the long run, but you can see what you think in later photos.

On to leaf number four now and some lovely yellows and soft greens this time:

The end of the needle painting in sight.  Join me next time for the fifth leaf. ☺

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2017

Autumn Leaves Wedding Pillow - Leaves 1 & 2

Thanks to all of you who commented on the last post.  It was a clear vote - one project at a time.

So, here's the first of a series of photo heavy posts showing most of the process of shading the leaves, then the numbering and then finally the whole piece made up.  Some stages didn't get photographed very much, so there are a few gaps, but I'm sure there's enough to get the idea. ☺

As it takes such a long time to choose, edit and upload the photos in order, (which is something that puts me off blogging a lot these days....), I'll be keeping text to a minimum - just the stuff that really adds something to the understanding of the project.

Let's make a start on leaves numbers one and two.

At this point I felt that the leaf veins were too heavy.  I'd been working them in the same thread as the shading was done - one strand of Madeira Silk, but it just seemed to overpower the leaves, especially the yellow and orange one.  Whilst walking up the road, I picked up a couple more leaves to have a look at the gauge of the leaf veins in nature and so decided to change to one strand of sewing cotton instead.

First came the delicate task of unpicking the original stitches, which wasn't easy!

Then came the re-stitching of the veins.  I know they're not a great deal finer, but, if nothing else, I got a chance to alter the colours and make the veins more curved and less stick-like.

Next time: Leaves three and four. ☺

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2017

Autumn Leaves Wedding Pillow - Design, Transfer and First Steps

It's finally time to get going on all the un-blogged projects that I've been working over the past three or four months.  It was rather hectic for a while, but now I feel that I've more or less caught up with myself and am ready to start documenting what I can remember of the process of creating three wedding gifts, one wedding dress modesty panel, one wedding card and a 'finishing up' project where I mounted or otherwise dealt with things where the stitchery had long since been completed, but was awaiting being made into something.

Let's start with the autumn leaves wedding souvenir pillow for the younger brother of the groom who received the white rose and lavender pillow back in May.  You could say that the pillow itself was the first one's little brother too as it was a little smaller, the design was simpler and quicker to work as I was using wider gauge threads.  More on that later.

The green leaves emoji you see above and may recognise from WhatsApp et al was, basically, the commission I received back in August, along with the wedding date and a 'neutral colour' for the background.  The bridal pair are very fond of leaves, woods and that kind of thing, and they often used this emoji as their symbol during their courtship and engagement.

The groom's mum initially asked if I could do it just as in the emoji - all rich green, but, as you can see, there simply isn't enough detail in it to make a worthwhile embroidery of any size.  It'd be ok as something about an inch square, but it's much too stylized to be any good as a thread painting.  So, I changed it to a more autumnal mix of colours, using this image I found on-line as a bit of a guide.  I zoomed the emoji to the right size on my tablet screen and traced it off there.  (Do you know how hard it is to trace off a screen?  Never mind one that keeps altering the size and jumping around if it feels too much pressure from your pencil!!?)  I then typed the numbering using the most rustic and woody looking font I could find, printed it out and made the following working design diagram, which, unless you're very new to my blog (in which case, Hi! Welcome☺), you'll have seen a few months ago.

The '10' was just that tiny bit too high up, so I compensated a bit when tracing it off onto the light beige/cream slub silk in my usual, high-tech, no expense spared style! ☺

I chose Madeira Silks to work with this time as they're much thicker than Pipers Silk Floss and have less sheen - perfect for the more rustic look needed for leaves.  Ok, yes, much, much faster to work with than the finer ones too.  Definitely no complaints there!

Here is the initial palette of autumn leaf shades I chose to work with.  It's also quite clear in this photo why I needed to re-wash and press the light silk.  Actually, I'd forgotten, but this fabric can be awfully 'papery' to work with.  I actually threw the last piece I tried to start a project on away as it was so unlike fabric and I couldn't bear the texture.  I'd worked on enough pieces of silk to know that it shouldn't have been like that, so, suspecting an over-zealous application of something with a stiffening effect, I headed to the washbasin with my trust Ecover delicate fabric detergent and some regular laundry softener, and gave it a good rinse out - after having washed a sample of the same fabric and pen to make sure I wasn't about to mess up my tracing.

The brown fabric shown underneath the main piece is a lovely, rich, reddish brown shade that came in a theme pack from The Silk Route a few years ago.  It was great to be able to use it for a perfectly matching project as the colour is really a dark copper tone.  Gorgeous!

Next up was making a start on the stitching by working the leaf sprig stem and beginning to outline one of the leaves.

The next day, I had to go and visit my mum in hospital and picked up a yellow and dark orange leaf of a similar type to the ones I was working as a colour and shading reference.  (My well-informed-on-nature friend, Emily, helped me to identify beech leaves as a possible type.)  As you can see from the outlined first leaf below, I'd woefully missed the mark when it came to how bright the colours needed to be!  Back to the Madeira Silk thread drawer and out came some much more vibrant shades to work with.

Here's the final line-up of colours and tools that were used in this project - including the sewing cottons that were needed for the finer leaf veins and the cute chocolate cupcake pincushion that a friend made me last spring and that really came into its own during this project.

Next time: progress on the leaves!

UNLESS you'd like me to mix the projects up a bit??  I have six whole projects to blog, including the finishing up one.  Would you like to see one at a time?  A mix of two or three at a time?  Or all of them in rotation?  What do you think?  Click over from your reader software and let me know.  They've all to be done and are all complete, so any order is fine with me.  You say.....

I also have a year end summary and projects planned for the year ahead to post (as well as how the ones I've started are coming on), plus a report on how I managed to downscale some of my stash - halved my fabric, can you believe?!  So, lots coming up.  Hoping to get my blogging umph back.  It's been gone for about two years now and it would be nice to get well and truly back into it.  No promises, but I'm going to try. ♥

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2017