Spring 2024: Google ended its email subscription service in 2021. I believe I've found a replacement, but haven't had time to test it. I have been stitching a little bit here and there and have some posts ready for when the email subscription is active again. Fingers crossed, I'll have time to rouse this blog out of its dormancy sometime this year.

09 June 2017

Pretty Pink Flowers Under the Birch

The Jo Butcher kit Under the Silver Birch is coming along nicely. After the purple flowers to the left and right of the tree trunk comes a scattering of pink flowers. They are composed of 3 different shades of rosey pink. The 3 shades are mixed in the needle to create different combinations. The flowers are quite pretty and they light up the piece.

Each flower is topped by a French knot. I decided to stitch the knots first in order to determine placement for the flowers. 

Under the Silver Birch (designed by Jo Butcher): Adding some Pink Flowers


Placement of and colour choices for these flowers took more work and concentration than I expected. I had to pay close attention to what I was doing and the flowers ended up taking quite a while to stitch.


Under the Silver Birch (designed by Jo Butcher): More pink flowers

After stitching the majority of the flowers I added a few more here and there just as you would if you were drawing, a different kind of thread painting.

Under the Silver Birch (designed by Jo Butcher): the mess on back theBecause of this skipping around, the back of the work is not a pretty sight! If you don't like messy backs I suggest you skip this photo. It's absolutely atrocious, but I find it amusing. I had to do a lot of thread travelling, much more than I normally would, but stopping and starting the threads is a little difficult because the ground fabric is somewhat unyielding. I'm trying to stop and start threads only when I have to. Also, there's more stitching to come so I'm not worried about the long threads coming loose. These travellers will be heavily stitched over.

By the way, I'm not one of those people who cares about the back of the work. (This is true in a general sense; there are exceptions such as table linens.) I usually maintain a fairly neat back, but as long as the front looks good and is not affected by anything on the reverse, I really don't care what's going on on the back.

I finished the leaves on the tree and have started on the little orange flowers to the left. It's coming together nicely. I really like the palette and the pink flowers have started the process of anchoring down the long green threads so that makes me happy.

Under the Silver Birch (designed by Jo Butcher): Finished tree leaves and orange flowers added

It should be finished very soon.

No comments :

Post a Comment