I said at the end of the last post that I was going to outline the motif in the middle (the hook with the blue outline) in twisted chain stitch. Twisted chain didn’t work too well – going around the motif was way too 4 wheel drive. Over the battlement couching motif edge, then edging up alongside the border stitches on each side. Twisted chain stitch goes to the side just a little, so it didn’t provide the stitch density that I wanted and fit into the available space.
I went with ordinary chain stitch, and interlaced the top side to make it thicker. This gives the hook a bit of an illusion that it’s emerging from behind the wibbly-wobbly motif on the left. I then did the wibbly-wobbly in chain stitch in brown – I needed something basic to avoid having those almost-touching points end up touching each other and blurring the lovely shape.
Woven Wheel
Here, the woven wheel in shown in the distance. I had tried doing this circle in turkey stitch (which didn’t work at all) and as a woven wheel in other colours. I like this version. I packed in the woven stitches to make the outer edges of the wheel pile up to add dimensionality. I ‘d already done the whipped wheel (which loops the thread over each spoke of the wheel) in purple and yellow. I thought doing a woven wheel (either over or under each alternating spoke) on the same piece would be a handy study example.
There’s a new lattice. It’s “Squared Lattice #3″ according to Erica Wilson (I certainly have gotten value from that book for this exercise) but I like to call it “the scribble lattice”. She suggests to fill each square entirely in satin stitch – I did just 3 stitches, medium, long, medium, so each fill looks like a little pen scribble.
4 tiny stitches over each lattice intersection resulted in an eyelet sort of effect.
Here are the long ribbons interior to the design – the first in double herringbone stitch :
And the second in bokhara couching, with just one couching stitch in order to contrast with the centipede stitch on the nearby border :
So here’s the complete piece as it stands at the moment -
I’ve taken out the griffin lattice to the top right – it was in a pale grey-tan which I ended up using for only that lattice. I’m going to re-do it in brown.
Chris B presented me with some purple Appleton wool to help me with my cat-couch-purple related problem. I’ve used the dark purple to outline the design to add depth to the entire piece. The Appleton may come in a million shades and be *The* Crewel Wool, but it’s a bit annoying with how it goes thick and thin (it broke a couple of times and I had to go back over a few stitches because they hardly showed the wool was so thin) compared to the Rennaissance Wool I’ve used in the majority of the piece. On the other hand, Ren Wools, while wonderfully consistent in diameter, (1 ply in contrast to Appleton 2 ply) are limited in shades. I’ve also found that some of the shades from different colour families (eg the browns and the non-woad blues I’m using in this piece) are so similar as to be really hard to tell apart. There is plenty of differentiation in the woad blue sets, which I just love and in general the vegetable dyed colours of Ren Wools are just incredible. I imagine getting a consist range of shades through vegetable dyeing would be a nightmare, if not outright impossible.
Meanwhile, my Ren purples should arrive from France in a week, and then I’ll have a heap of outlining motifs to do and I’ll be picking off the few remaining lattice motifs to fill…..I’ve decided to do that hook in the middle of the piece in purple battlement couching. I do love battlement couching.