0 Ring Cushion - moving towards completion

Of course, the whole cushion is already finished and handed over as the wedding is tomorrow at noon, but there are still so many photos etc, that I've decided to split the last stages in to two posts.

The first thing to do was to complete the smaller plant elements, leaf veins and stems that were left over from the stage you saw last weekend.  This is the first 'attempt' at it, but the pink main stems for the evening primroses, whilst they looked passable on the left hand side, were really wishy-washy on the right and were lost amongst the brighter herb robert stems.  So, my next move was to replace them with something darker and more easy to distinguish among a mass of stems.  I used one strand each of a green and a brown - the only part of the project worked in two strands.  Here's the result, complete with my dummy yellow paper butterfly.

Moving on now to the creation of the brimstone butterfly (in keeping with the yellow theme of the flowers for the ceremony etc).  After a false start trying to work some wings directly onto the yellow silk fabric that I used for the cushion back with some 34 gauge beading wire and some Pipers Silk floss, I decided to try them on a piece of fine cotton lawn, some white paper covered 30 gauge wire and good old stranded cotton instead.  I needed the fabric to be yellow all through, so as to avoid the all too common white edges that can be seen on some wired stumpwork pieces.  I remembered that my silk dyes could also be used on cotton, so I mixed together my warm and cool yellow shades to get something that would match well and soaked the fabric well with it.  Once it was dry, the whole thing was dyed through and I could attach the wires as you can see here.  The shapes were taken from Jane Nicholas' latest book, 'Stumpwork Butterflies and Moths', but scaled down a tiny bit.  (The body area I created myself with simple padded satin stitch and a few straight stitches.)

Here you can see the next stage, the filling in of the embroidery of the wings.  You can see that I added a little grey on the inner edge to try and make it as realistic as possible.  I carried this all the way through to the edging and that left me with a slight colour mismatch problem along the inner edge as you can see in this next shot:

Not a major problem though.  I found a silver gel pen that was just right for colouring in the yellow edges that were sticking through the grey and eliminated that problem altogether.=)  Here's the finished butterfly in position on the piece:

What about the whole of the finished piece?  Look out for that next week!=)

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2014

Detail: Ring Cushion - moving towards completion

0 Needlequest Update - 21 April 2014

Is it really almost two weeks since I last posted?  Goodness!  Well, I'm OK, although health has been a problem of late.  I still can't wear my glasses, but am taking antibiotics for the sinus infection and will see the doctor tomorrow about it.  It does make computer use very challenging and so I've hardly had my machine on at all.  Actually, it's been rather nice....=)

So, where am I with Needlequest work?  I thought I'd try and merge March and April's themes and do my goldwork butterflies as fitting 'Spring' as well.  So, I made a start with the most appalling bullion knots  done very badly with Coats Ophir, as you can see here!  There's an extra loop just hanging around on each of the three knots and they looked so bad, that all I could do was take them out again.  To be honest, bullions aren't my forté even with cotton threads.  With metallics, they're dreadful.  I'd need a lot of patient practice before I could make this look good.  Then I got to asking myself if the reason I'd neglected this piece didn't have something to do with not really wanting to stitch it, and realised that I really didn't want to do it. So, I took the fabric out of the hoop, erased the outline and put it aside for something else later on.  Basically, I like using metallic threads as trims etc, but I'm not into pure goldwork after all.  Something valuable learned there!=)

So, what next?  I decided as I love butterflies and am thinking of using a Helen M Stevens' inspired design for the wedding ring cushion (more on that another day), I would work a small piece of hers in silks.  Anyone who has her 'Embroidered Butterflies' may recognise this piece from early on in the book.  I decided to take the two elements marked out here:

And turn them into a nice, small scale study.

As you can see from this tracing, I've deleted the caterpillar part as it would have made the whole thing a bit too wide.

The two butterflies here are very springlike indeed as we actually saw them in a garden in Gloucestershire where we were guests last Sunday.=)  So, here are one brimstone and one male orange tip.

This is the green fabric I've chosen to work it on and the Pipers silks ready to go.  I've transferred the outline, which is a bit faint, but workable with, I think.  Just need to fish out one more colour for one of the butterflies and then get started.  The fabric is quite interesting as, although you can't really see it here, it's a bit discoloured and a darker, blue-er green at the bottom than the rest.  I'm hoping that that subtle shade change will enhance the finish, making it more lifelike.

I really haven't felt much like stitching of late, so I hope I can get on with this during the week and have something to share next week.

What about you?  What have you been doing?

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2014

Detail: Needlequest Update - 21 April 2014

0 Completed DMC Stumpwork Butterfly Kit

So, the DMC Butterfly stumpwork kit is finished!

It's a shame these kits were discontinued, even though the designs are nothing to write home about and some of the details in the insects etc shaky to say the least.  For instance, in this one, the butterfly wings were meant to be worked in padded satin stitch.  Padded satin stitch - for thin, delicate butterfly wings.  Hmmm!  The kits are fun and fairly simple to work - even though they say 'Advanced' on the box.

Here are all the wires for the wings couched onto the white fabric provided, which was first mounted in my tiny, 4" hoop - the smallest I have.  (Are smaller ones made, does anyone know?)

Above you can see the blue sections of the wings worked and below shows part way through adding in the brown edging.  From comparing the colours to my butterfly guide, I would say this was a Green Underside Blue butterfly!!

These are the finished wings, the edges done in white overcast stitch, all ready to be cut out and attached.  After they were, the piece looked like this:

Hope you've enjoyed seeing this one progress.  I just have one more of these kits to work - the dragonfly, and it's already out on my table to be started soon, although I have a card to do before that.

(PS Jules: This kit was sent to me as part of an old cross stitch newsgroup exchange game, it wasn't a magazine freebie.  I've never known a mag give away anything of this ilk!)

A tutorial is coming up for wired fabric elements for stumpwork, so look out for that on Friday, (this wasn't it...!)

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2013

Detail: Completed DMC Stumpwork Butterfly Kit

0 5 Smalls, 3 Styles

Here are all my other recent finishes, most of which were worked on whilst I was working in Leeds recently.

The first is a cross stitched bookmark made for an elderly friend of ours, Charlie. He was delighted with it when we gave it to him last night.=)


Next we have the two printed canvas needlepoint kits that my mum found a few months before we went to Taiwan (about two years ago now!) and that I recently finished off and 'repaired'. On looking at the top one again the other day, I realised that there are more repairs to make, i.e. when I decided, in my 11 year old wisdom, that it wouldn't matter if one or two stitches went \ when all the others were / as it filled in the shape better....




Here's a wedding card done well in advance of the big day on 20 August this year. Now like me to get things done in good time (Prince Albert would have approved: 'It's always better to complete a task well ahead of schedule.'), so I now have this to keep clean and safe (in its envelope) for the next 2 months and to think of a gift to make.


The last photo shows the circular card mount I chose to put the silver and purple heart in. I took pix of both this and in a square mount and, as soon as I could see them side by side in my photo package, there was no contest on which looked best. (I'll post a better photo when I've taken one.)


Next task is to get on with the blackberries and make up the two cushion/pillow covers etc, but I'm rather busy preparing for software and secretarial exams (plus going to classes and so on) just now, so I mayn't get on as quickly as I'd like... So what's new, huh?!

Detail: 5 Smalls, 3 Styles