My work order for the trinket box side is
- the butterfly (silk thread)
- the flower stem (silver passing)
- outlining the motif (gold twist)
- 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…..
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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.
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Long and short stitching
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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
- a shade a bit darker than to the darkest shade used in the motif, (particularly when the outline was gimp)
- a dark brown
- less common : the drawn outline left exposed
- I’ve seen a couple of examples where a light coloured thread was used for outlining
- 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.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
