Butterfly

My work order for the trinket box side is

1. the butterfly (silk thread)
2. the flower stem (silver passing)
3. outlining the motif (gold twist)
4. silk wrapped purl

Silk thread always goes down before the metal thread because otherwise it can catch on the metal thread stitched onto the ground and be damaged. The s-w purl goes down last, using the same principle, and also because it can be accidentally crushed.

I’ve done the butterfly…..

Satin Stitching

I tore up a few suga of a thread at the chinline with a single swipe of the point of my laying tool, so pulled them down to the side and secured them using just a few suga from the matching thread. Those are secure stitches for a waste knot over on the wing.

Long and short stitching

Outlining and an eye

I’ve found darkest brown works better than black for outlining – it’s not as stark, but still shows up well. A personal choice. From my observations, outlining of motifs in the original period embroidery could be

1. a shade a bit darker than to the darkest shade used in the motif,  (particularly when the outline was gimp)
2. a dark brown
3. less common : the drawn outline left exposed
4. I’ve seen a couple of examples where a light coloured thread was used for outlining
5. You can tell when black thread was used, because the thread has broken/come away/stained the ground because of the black’s acidic properties.

but whichever approach was used, it remained consistent throughout the piece.