Embroidery Mistake – YUCK!

If you’ve been keeping up with the silk work sampler I’m ever-so-slowly working on, you might want to see my latest addition, which I don’t like, and which is coming out at the next opportunity!

I finished the leaf worked in split stitch (it’s the one on the right) and decided to launch into the third flower.

One drawback was that the stitches were supposed to run horizontal in each petal, towards the center line down the petal to create a “voided” meeting area. Well, I figured to get the full effect of the void, if the stitches met anywhere else, you really wouldn’t notice the voided line down the middle – or it would end up looking too sectioned off.

So I thought I’d just change the tones of red as I worked down the petal, creating horizontal layers of color, and forgetting about the “shape” of the color (rounded arches of color in each petal.)

And so I set about to do that, and this is the result:

I don’t like it one tiny bit. If the color change were more gradual, it probably wouldn’t be that bad. But in order to get a gradual color change, I’d have to split the Japanese silk and work in a few strands of the lighter shade as I worked down. Um… I’ve done that before, with the sky in my Agnus Dei…. it takes a bit o’ time, if nothing else. I don’t want this project to be frustrating, because I’m afraid if it reaches a high frustration level, no one will finish it!

The other problem is that the straight horizontal lines, when worked around the circle of the flower, would really look angular, which wouldn’t really match with the rest of the sampler.

So I’m going to pick that silly looking petal out and go back to the arched color changes.

You may wonder why it’s a big deal to go horizontal on this flower, when we worked the other one vertical. Well, it’s a matter of seeing how the light catches on the stitches, depending on the type of stitch and the direction of stitch.

For example, you can see a difference between the two leaves – yes, they’re the same colors, but they look slightly different, because the light plays off of them differently. The one on the right is worked in small split stitches while the one on the left is worked in longer long-and-short stitch.

Well, when I get around to picking the thing out and re-attempting it, I’ll let you know how the alternative works. In the meantime, I seem to have contracted the Creepy Crawly Crud (sinus / bronchial stuff), so embroidery’s not on my list of priorities – actually, the only thing on my list is BED!