Well, the background is finished, the wide borders are done, the corners just need finishing off and the narrow borders are begun. One day I will get to the main event - the horse.
Here is a bit more detail for the corner and borders. For the narrow borders I used hemstitch with offset clusters for the side and hemstitch and herringbone at the bottom. These two borders will be repeated on the other two sides. Click on the image to see it larger.
The stitches for whitework are pretty straightforward, it's all about consistent tugs in the right direction. The effect is pretty though.
I have used coton a broder for the corners and the wide border - just because I preferred the look of it. The narrow borders are worked in stranded cotton like the rest of the piece.
I am looking forward to moving on to the horse.
I have been very lazy about posting here, blame it on post-christmas blues or something. But the stitching is coming on slowly. The background is almost three quarters complete, as you can see I have just randomly repeated rows of the same stitches to give a lacy, open effect. I have mainly used 3 sided stitch, 4 sided stitch, honeycomb stitch in 2 different variations, stem stitch, spaced satin stitch and chained border.
I have drawn the border threads and used double crossing clusters for two borders and knotted coral clusters for the other two. The bars are corded and then the first corner woven. Preparing the corners took some time but I quite like the finished corner - only 3 more to do!
Oh yes, I used coton a broder for the borders and corners, it seemed to give more substance to them and looked less mean.
I have a bit of a love-hate thing going with this piece, but I seem to with most pieces at this stage so - Get Over It!
Well, it's been a long time since my last post. Sorry about that but I have been busy stitching. With whitework "reverse stitching" is pretty easy - a welcome change from blackwork where it was pretty difficult. Anyway I am making progress now and trying to catch up because I am behind schedule with the Diploma course.
This is what the piece looks like now. I have removed the threads to make a wide border all round and have worked almost halfway up the background behind the horse in a variety of stitches. The stitches that I have used so far are: chained border, three sided, four sided, waffle, honeycomb and spaced satin. For the Diploma you need to use about five stitches, but I have taken a more the merrier approach so far.
This photograph gives a slightly closer view of the stitches. As you can see, I have just left the space within the horse outline completely untouched.
The border has been hemstitched; the drawn threads woven inand blanket stitched and the bars worked.
There is still a lot of work to do though.
Well, after a bit of a false start, my whitework is actually underway.
It is pretty hard to see the design on this photograph, but it is a horse trotting.
All that I have done so far is to start on the borders - a bit of drawn thread and hemstitching, and then started to fill in the background to the horse with some pulled thread stitches. So far I have used chained border and three sided stitch. There is a photograph below of the tiny bit that I have done.
The idea is to use a whole variety of stitches to make up the background. Should be fun!
Well, I have mounted my blackwork and handed it in, so it is straight on to whitework. I am running a bit behind schedule, so there is no time to draw breath between pieces. There is very little to show for an awful lot of work so far. Like so many things whitework is all in the preparation. So the linen is on my slate frame; the design is tacked on; the centre is found and I have counted and recounted threads into multiples of 12. There is really nothing to take a photograph of at present, maybe next time.
We had always planned to highlight the curls in his hair, but I got cold feet about it all and panicked horribly. Anyway, Tracy steadied me down when I was in Durham with her last week and here is the final result.
I am not at all sure that his mother would recognise him - but I rather like him (after all that grief).
I will be quite pleased to hand this piece in for assessment, he has hung around my house for far too long. Now it is just a case of finishing touches, mounting and handing in.
I forgot to say. My Kingfisher has been at the RSN for ages. He was part of their Glasgow exhibition earlier this year and now will be in their Hampton Court studio exhibition "Inspired by the garden" from September 2014 to March 2015. Check out their website (www.royal-needlework.org.uk) to see more. There should be loads of lovely stuff to see. Hampton Court itself is always worth a visit.
