The Turquoise Serpent is coming along, but not all that quickly, I’m afraid. Still, here’s progress so far: One of the reasons I haven’t done as much as I’d expected is that it’s taking longer to cut the suede ‘mosaic’ pieces to shape than I thought it would. I want them to be interesting shapes…
I’m now adding the appliqué pieces. They’re all going to be in leather this time – I’ve had enough fiddly fabric pieces for a while! I started with the mouth, in red leather, and teeth, in silver kid. I then added the turquoise suede “mosaic” to the detail over the eye. This was followed by…
I’ve been doing some reading, and it seems my serpent is Xiuhcoatl, the Aztec fire deity, and the embodiment of the dry season and the weapon of the sun. As Xiuhcoatl is something of a challenge to pronounce and spell for a Northern European such as myself, I am happy to report that it translates…
Did I say the fun part came next? I’m not sure why! I want this piece to be raised rather than flat – stumpwork, I suppose – so it needs to be padded. As it’s fairly large and I want it to be quite noticeably raised, I used carpet felt. I traced the outline of…
An idea for a piece of embroidery can hit you when you least expect it. One evening, I was watching a nature programme on TV when the phone rang. I paused the programme and settled down for a chat, but as I talked, I kept looking at the image on the screen. The picture was…
I’ve now finished all the appliqué pieces for the second cross: There are 11 satin pieces per leg, so 44 per cross, then the 4 around the centre for each cross, making 96 in all. When I first worked that out, I wished I hadn’t (I still had about 70 to go!), but now they’re…
Or at any rate, I think it’s solved. Take a look at the picture below – does that look straight to you? I hope it does. It didn’t before, or not to me. I tried to ignore it, and to tell myself that it would look fine to everyone else, I was just too close,…
The appliqué detail on the first cross is now all done – and here it is: So that’s all the satin pieces attached, and edged with Jap gold thread. Some of them more than once – it’s taken longer than I’d expected to get this far, as I wasn’t happy with what I’d done on…
The cross is coming along – I’ve got the appliqué done on two of the legs now. As I’m concentrating a lot on the appliqué at the moment, I thought you might be interested to see some other pieces I’ve made using the same technique. These cushions show the Chinese characters for ‘Friendship’, ‘Eternity’, and…
I’m now working on appliqué detail down the legs of the cross. This is in exactly the same fabric and technique as described previously, so I won’t go over it all again. Here’s how the completed first leg looks, anyway: Mary Corbet suggested a different technique for the appliqué shapes, and I’d been considering having…