Plantagenet Wreath - roses (part I)

Just the roses left to embroider.

You may remember that when we looked at the colours to be used for the roses, it included a shade of pink, Madeira stranded cotton no. 0303.  Although the roses are going to be (mostly) white, I'm using a bit of pink too.

The stylised rose design has a feature that I've always taken to be the top of each petal turned over a little.  I need to highlight this in some way, and so as the embroidery will be applied to a dark red velvet once it's completed, I'm picking it out in a complementary shade: the pink.

I've stitched over the lines of this detail in split stitch:

And a close-up:

If this is an overhang, then there should be a bit of shadow cast underneath it onto the petal below; I'm adding this using small stitches in one strand of the pink and one of the off-white used for the outlining, no. 2402:

and in close-up again:

Next time, I'll fill in the rest of the roses.

Plantagenet Wreath - broom flowers

The broom flower blossoms next.  No shading, just yellow.

The first fifty:

And the second:

Although the layout is quite formal, all the flowers are slightly different - I didn't want the design to be rigid, and so while the positioning is uniform, I drew each flower freehand.

Here's a close-up of one set, to see them in more detail:

It's coming along - just the roses to embroider.

Plantagenet Wreath - little green caps

The broom flowers are to be filled in next, all one hundred of them, and I'm starting with the little green caps at their bases (I'm sure these have a proper botanical name but I have no idea what it is!).

These are in the lightest shade of green, Madeira stranded cotton no. 1401.  The first fifty worked in satin stitch:

and all hundred:

These are rather small and not that easy to see, so here's a close-up of a set of ten:

I'm really pleased with how it's coming along, and I'm looking forward to doing the flowers themselves next.

Plantagenet Wreath - stems

All the outlining's done, so onto the filling in.

I'm starting with the stems, in the same shade of green, Madeira stranded cotton no. 1410, as used when outlining them.  No shading here, just filling in the full stem in the one colour using long and short stitch.

There are ten sets of stems in total, and here's the first five:

And the rest:

It makes quite a difference!  Onto the broom flowers next.

Plantagenet Wreath - outlining the roses

The last bit of outlining, this time for the roses.

These are quite fiddly, involving three stages and colours:

That pink shade will actually come into its own later; for the outlining I'm using the yellow and off-white, and the darkest of the three shades of green we looked at earlier.

Firstly, the centres of the roses, in a slightly darker yellow than the broom flowers, Madeira stranded cotton no. 0106:

Next, the roses themselves, in no. 2402:

And finally the little green leaves between the rose petals, in no. 1412:

So that's everything outlined - I can start filling in the colour next.  I'm looking forward to it!

Plantagenet Wreath - outlining the flowers

The stems are outlined, and next it's the broom flowers.  These have a small pale green cap at the base, which are going to be worked in the lightest shade of the greens we looked at last time, 1401.

There are 100 broom flowers - that doesn't have any significance, it's just a result of having quite a formal layout for the design.  It does mean I can quite easily keep a mental note of the percentage of flowers completed, though!

The little caps outlined:

The flowers themselves are in a strong yellow, no. 0104:

The flowers themselves outlined:

The layout for the flowers is regular but the flowers themselves are not: they were all drawn separately and are all slightly different sizes and positions, to give a more organic look.  I want the look of this piece to be formal but not rigid.

Just the outline for the roses to go.

Plantagenet Wreath - outlining the stems

Annoyingly, I forgot to take a photo of the fabric off the paper it had been on when it was painted and put onto a frame ready to start, so we'll just have to skip that bit and go straight to it with some stitching on.

I'm not going to be doing much in the way of shading in this project, so while I'll be using three shades of green stranded cotton, it's not with a view to producing any shaded effects with them.

Here they are:

Using the middle shade, no. 1410, I've outlined the stems in split stitch:

I'll outline the broom flowers next.