St Cuthbert's Flowers: everything else

Apologies for not having posted anything in ages, but I'm back now.  Even if I wasn't blogging I was sewing, and have finished the St Cuthbert's Flowers panel.  As I've kept you waiting far too long already I won't drag it out any further - this post will cover the rest of the project to completion.

So, last time I'd got as far as the outline of the flowers and leaves in buttonhole stitch.  The next step was to fill them in.  First the leaves, in split stitch:

And then the flowers, in split stitch for the petals and French knots for the centres:

They don't look like much like that, but that's not the finished item - they're cut out and applied to a background of red cotton velvet.  Flowers first this time:

Then the leaves:

The white tacking stitches show the centre of the background fabric, to allow me to get the cut out pieces aligned correctly.

They're rather fluffy round the edges like that, from the by now rather frayed linen, so I edged them in couched gold thread, tucking the fluffy bits in as I went:

Much neater!

I then added stalks, also in couched gold:

The gold threads are couched using the same shade of green as the leaves, to tie it together.

With the tacking stitches removed (or most of them - there's one left in the centre that I missed, though I did spot it later and took it out):

The client specified the finished piece needed to be 54cm x 54cm (21" x 21"), to fit an existing frame.  As it wasn't to be a panel to be hung on its own, I stretched it over a piece of mount board I cut to size, rather than anything stiffer.

Pinned and the corners mitred:

Then the back laced:

Finished!

Even though it's to go in a frame, I also covered the back, using a gold brocade, though unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of that.  It won't be seen, but it finished it off far more nicely than leaving the lacing exposed.

It's now with the client, who seemed very pleased, which is always nice!

The very last wood avens

An even shorter post than last time, I'm afraid, as I've about run out of things to say about the flowers by now.  So, in amongst the latest crop of domestic catastrophes (my oven burst into flame, and subsequent investigations have turned up some expensive wiring problems), I have managed to battle on with the sewing.

And here are the very last wood avens:

Not long to go now - just two more sheets of flowers.

Second-last wood avens

A very quick post: there are a lot more wood avens on this panel, and I'm doing them on two sheets.  Here's the first, with the green sepals stitched:

Then with the yellow petals:

And completed, with the central area filled in with French knots:

There are (obviously) six flowers on this sheet, but just five on the next one, and then that's something else that can be ticked off the list!

The last pearlworts

Things are still very busy at work so I haven't managed to nearly as much sewing as normal, but I have done a bit here and there, and so do have something to show you.

As this is the final panel, I can start ticking off the 'lasts', starting with the last sheet of pearlworts.  Here's the linen piece with the transfers applied, mounted on the frame and ready to stitch:

With their centres and sepals:

The buttonhole stitch outlines for the petals:

The first colour:

The second:

And the third, with the petals completed:

Finally, with French knots in the centres, to finish them off:

I thought I'd get the ferns out of the way next.

Wood avens

Another quick Banner update for you: I've now finished the sheet with all this panel's wood avens on:

I've made a start on the next one I'm doing, the first of the two foxgloves, so I should have that to show you shortly.

It's coming along, isn't it!

Starting the third panel

Back to the beginning again, with the third panel, the right hand one this time.  First up, a sheet with all the pearlworts for this panel:

Can you spot the not-so-deliberate mistake?  If you can, you're doing better than me, as I'd taken the linen off the frame and put it away in the cupboard before it occurred to me that I'd forgotten to do the central French knots.  Back out of the cupboard it came!

I don't like doing French knots in the hand - they're far easier to do with the fabric in a frame, but it didn't seem worth mounting it back up for just a few knots, so I just did them like that anyway.

It meant the fabric now looks a bit crumpled, but that'll be sorted out when it gets damp stretched later on.

Gibside Chapel

You've been following me for some time now using split stitch to give (hopefully!) realistic shading to the Banner's flowers, but I've also used it for some small landscapes, including one of Gibside Chapel.

Gibside, on the outskirts of Gateshead, is now a National Trust property; most of the buildings are sadly now ruined, but the pretty Palladian chapel is still in good order, and the gardens and landscaping are beautiful.

As part of an outreach initiative, local craft groups, including the Embroiderers' Guild, were invited to spend a Bank Holiday weekend at the Chapel, giving demonstrations and answering visitors' questions.  As part of that, I decided to stitch a picture of the Chapel itself.

I took a photo of the Chapel from the front, and traced the basic outlines to form the design, which I then ironed onto linen.  Using the same split stitch shading techniques that I'm now using for the flowers, I could then fill in the areas for the sky (a rather sunnier blue than the reality!), the grass, including the shade under the trees, and most of the architectural detail of the building itself.

The trees and final detailing on the building were done with French knots, and some back stitch with a single strand of cotton for outlining.

Apart from a bit of artistic licence with the sky, I tried to keep the colours as close to the ones in the photo as possible; my hope was to produce what looked like a miniature painting, but in stitch.

Wood avens - petals and centres

I've finished the second sheet of wood avens.

After buttonhole stitching round the edges of the petals:

I added the first band of stitches in the palest shade.  I put more in than last time, to give a slightly more pronounced effect:

Then a band with one strand of the paler and one of the (slightly) darker colour:

Then finally finishing off the petals with split stitch using the darker shade:

Finally, I filled in the centres with French knots in green, and the darkest yellow I'm using on these flowers, a shade darker than the petals:

Here's the full sheet, completed:

French knots

Having completed the petals, I now need to fill in the space in the centre of each flower, and I'm going to do this using French knots.

From photos, the middle of the wood avens' centre area is a light green, surrounded by a darker yellow, so I'm going to use Madeira 1410, the lighter of the two greens I've already used here, and 0106, the next-darker shade of yellow from the ones I used on the petals.

Taking photos of stitching the knots was a bit tricky as ideally you need both hands for this (to keep the thread taut), and I was trying to hold the camera with one of them, but hopefully you can more or less see what I was doing.

The knots are going to be thickly worked to fill the entire space, so I brought the thread up at a random point within the centre area:

I then wrapped the thread around the needle, twice:

I was taught a long time ago that you should never wrap the thread more then twice around the needle to make a French knot; if you need a larger knot, use a thicker thread.

I then put the needle into the fabric close to where it came up, but don't yet take it through to the back.

I then pulled the thread, so that the loops around the needle are pulled tight, and are next to the fabric:

I then pulled the needle through to the back of the fabric; this takes the thread through the loops around the needle:

And forms the knot:

As I'm just using two strands, the knots are quite small, and I need a lot of them to fill the space, but they're quite quick to do.  I did all the green ones first, forming a cluster in the centre of each flower, with a few dotted around the edge:

I then filled in the remaining space with more knots in the yellow:

And in close-up:

And that's the first sheet of the wood avens finished!