St Cuthbert's Flowers

I've been commissioned to make a panel featuring a small posy of flowers from St Cuthbert's Banner.  The client has asked for three wood avens and their leaves, to be made in the same materials and techniques as the Banner itself.

So, here I've made a transfer of the flowers and leaves, and ironed it onto some fine linen.  I've then gone round the edge of the leaves in small buttonhole stitch in Madeira stranded cotton 1410:

Then the flower sepals, also in 1410, and the petals in 0104:

It's just like old times!

The final, FINAL sheet of flowers

Well, the big day is finally here: I have finished stitching all of the flowers for the Banner.  This is momentous enough to be documented in detail, I think, so here goes.

The last sheet of flowers to do is the cowslip that'll go in the centre of the top panel:

I outlined the cups at the base of the individual flowers in buttonhole stitch in Madeira stranded cotton 1409, and added detail in split stitch, using three strands of 1410:

I then filled in the rest of the cups in split stitch, using two strands of 1409:

I then outlined the flowers themselves, using Madeira 0105:

To give a sense of the 'inside' of the flower, I filled in the central section of each one in a slightly darker shade, 0106:

I then added shading, using one strand of 0106 and one of 0105:

And filled in the rest of the flowers with 0105:

I then filled in the little gaps that are too small and fiddly to cut out in red, Madeira 0510 (you can't tell when they're on the velvet background, honest!):

Then the same process for the leaves - the outlines, in Madeira 1410:

The leaf veins, in three strands of 1412:

And then filling in the rest, using a combination of 1411 and 1410, to give a shaded effect:

And that's it!  No more flowers.  Wow.  I still have to add them to the background fabric and do all the goldwork, of course, but all the same, this is a major milestone.  Not long to go now!

Wood avens leaves

The last ever wood avens leaves.  I like saying that!

I forgot to take a photo before I started, but I hadn't got too far before I remembered:

With the outline done:

The central leaf veins:

The darkest filling-in colour in the centre:

Shading into the lighter colour:

And finally, the lighter colour, filling in all the rest:

Amazingly, there's just ONE MORE sheet of flowers to go!  It'll be quite a momentous day when that's finished.

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!

Final (and fewer) ferns

Things have been really hectic at work leading up to a new product launch, which happened today, but which won't be of much interest to you unless you happen to work in the construction industry.  Late nights at the office have meant rather less time for sewing, but I've done bits when I can, and am very happy to say that I have now done the last ever ferns.  Even better, there were not only fewer of them than for the last couple of panels, but fewer than there ought to have been.

What do I mean by that?  Well, you may recall that throughout I've been hopeless at either tracing or stitching the right number of leaves, and ended up with more than I needed.  I saved these up, however, and the spare leaves make up most of two whole ferns:

All I needed to finish them off are a couple of trefoil tops and an extra leaf.

A also had a spare transfer for one fern (I miscounted an entire fern at one point), so I just needed to make new transfers for three full ones and the additional bits:

Going out with a flourish, I managed to miscount the number of leaves on one of them again, but at least I spotted this in time (or at least I think so; we may find I've gone hopelessly wrong one last time when I come to stitch them to the background).

Ironed on, framed up, and ready to go:

Outlined:

And finished!  Hooray!

(By the way, apologies for the ungrammatical 'St Cuthberts Banner' label; the new version of Blogger insists that the apostrophe in the label is an '&' and won't allow it.  Go figure.)

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.

Cowslips

The second-last-ever cowslip.  Not much of a milestone, but it's something!

That's all of the embroidery for the right panel done, so now it’s back to applying all the flowers to the velvet.  Once I’ve got this panel done, I’ll really start to feel that the end is in sight.

(Sorry for the very short and rather infrequent posts lately, by the way. I shall try and do better.)

The first milestone

Today is an important day: it marks the first milestone in completing the Banner.  And here it is:

It's a sheet of foxgloves, and yes, you've seen other ones before, but what makes this one important, is that it's the last one.  There are four foxgloves on the Banner - two each on the left and right panels - and this is the fourth one.  For the first time, I've done all the embroidery for a particular flower.  No more foxgloves, ever!

Of course, it'd be better if it was the last of the ferns, but their turn will come, and for the first time, I really feel the end is in sight.  We can start to count down a few more milestones in the weeks to come.

Four more ferns

Another update for you: the remaining four ferns for this panel:

I'm pleased with progress so far - I've just got two more sheets of flowers to do (a foxglove and the cowslips), then that's it for this panel, and ahead of schedule too.

I haven't done them yet, though.  Back to work!

Foxglove

Firstly, I'd like to say thanks to Jacqueline at Needleprint for the fantastic post on the St Cuthbert's Banner project.  It never ceases to amaze me how generous and kind everyone is and how much support you all give me, and I am truly thankful to everyone who takes the time to read my blog, comment or post themselves. Thanks to each and every one of you!

Back to business, though.  I've now finished the first (of two) foxgloves for this panel:

The foxgloves never show up that well at this stage as they're quite light on a white background, but I think they're my favourites of all the flowers.

I'll try and think of them when I'm back to my least favourite ones: yet more ferns...

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!

Third panel update: five ferns

As with the second panel, there are nine ferns to embroider, and here are five of them:

They look fine when they're applied to the velvet and nicely edged with gold, but (and I think I've mentioned this before, about a dozen times) they're a pain to do.  They're small and fiddly and, frankly, a bit boring.  So, it's best to get them over with, I suppose, and now I'm over half way through them.

You might have noticed that two of them, with seven leaves each, are bigger than the others, with six.  Amazingly, this is deliberate.  I may be speaking too soon, but I think I've finally got the hang of them; on the very similar second panel (and on the design), two of the ferns are bigger than the rest, so here I've stitched an extra leaf each.  This also means that the four remaining ones are all six-leaf ones, so that's good!

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.

Second sheet of foxgloves

I've now finished the second (of two) sheet of foxgloves.  So for the usual before-and-after pictures, here's the transfer, ready to be stitched:

And with all the embroidery done:

I like the foxgloves, even though they're fiddly to do - the small flowers at the top are less than a centimetre (under half an inch) across.  I like doing them more than the ferns, for example, and I think that's because they're more interesting.  They're prettier, there's more going on in both the design and the stitching, and they look more natural.

There'll be a couple more of them on the right-hand panel, but for now, that's the last of the embroidery for the left one.  I'm really pleased with this - according to my schedule, I needed to get all the embroidery done by 12 March, so I'm finished three weeks early!  Putting the first panel together took me longer than I'd expected, but now I've made up some time I should still be able to keep on track overall, even if this one take a bit longer than anticipated too.  That's the theory, anyway - time will tell if it works out like that.

The rest of the ferns

I hadn't realised it's been such a long time since my last post - sorry about that.  Time does seem to fly, doesn't it!

Since then, I've finished the rest of the ferns for the second Banner panel.  Here's the transfer for them:

I made these transfers quite a long time ago, and it looks as though while doing them, I realised that I'd been doing too many individual leaves, and after the first one, started doing fewer.  I wish I'd remembered that when I first came to stitch them!

Here they are stitched:

There's just the second foxglove to go now, and I've already made a start on it, so hopefully it shouldn't be too long before you hear from me again!

Cowslips

The left Banner panel has a cowslip in the centre, the same as the bottom one, which again consists of three flower heads in different sizes, the smallest being about 2.5cm (1") across.  All threads and techniques are the same as before.

Here's the linen with the transfer on it, framed up and ready to go:

I'd traced the flowers as they appear on the design, but I feel that with all the flower heads, it looks a bit heavy and some of the definition is lost, so I'm leaving one out in each case.  These have a pencil cross through them, as a reminder to myself not to go ahead and stitch them in a fit of absent-mindedness.

So, with the little green cups at the base of each individual flower stitched:

Then the flowers themselves:

As with the earlier cowslip, I filled the little gaps between the individual flowers that are too small to cut out with split stitches in a red to match the velvet:

Finally, I worked the leaves, so here's the full thing, completed:

 The embroidery for the second panel is coming along very well - I think I'm slightly ahead of schedule!