Silk Work Embroidery Sampler – an Update

During the summer, our adult embroidery group began a silk work embroidery sampler. We started from absolute “scratch.” We traced our designs, pricked them, mounted the linen on frames, and then pounced the designs, tracing over the pounced lines with watercolor paint. We meet just once a week, so our progress is relatively slow!

I thought I’d share a few photos of the second flower, which is worked in flat silk in satin stitch, and the second leaf, which is worked in twisted silk in split stitch.

Here’s a view of what I’ve completed so far. It isn’t much! The threads I’m using are Au Ver a Soie, Soie d’Alger for the twisted silk (one strand), and flat silk from the Japanese Embroidery Center. The colors are not a perfect match, but they are at least complementary. I would have preferred a perfect match!

This is a close up on the flower in the flat silk. It has a much higher sheen than the twisted silk! The satin stitch is used to fill in each gradation in color. The outline of each petal (and also the line between each color) is worked in stem stitch.

Here’s the second leaf, which is worked in llines of split stitch. The color blend is greated by “dove-tailing” the lines of split stitch, so that the edge of each finished row of color resembles the edge of a finished row of long and short stitch. This way, the colors work into each other gradually and blend better.

Here’s a close up on the finished half of the leaf. You can see how the split stitched lines work into each other. In fact, it’s hard to follow one complete line of split stitch in the picture. They’re a bit crowded, actually.

And here you can see how the lines are kind of “dove-tailed” so that the next color will blend in with them.

So that’s as far as I’ve gotten! I’m pretty determined to finish it…. before Christmas!