Next, another sheet of wood avens. There are just five on this sheet rather than six like before, so it should take a little less time to do. Otherwise, it’s the same as before. Using Madeira 1410, I buttonhole stitched round the edges of the sepals (the green bits): Then a band of stitches in…
Sorry it’s been such a long time since my last post, I have been busy, honestly! Actually, that’s been most of the problem – I’ve been too busy. Anyway, I’m back now, so I can start to bring you up to date. To begin with, I’ve finished the first sheet of ferns. Previously, I’d completed the…
The next sheet I’ll be working on is of three ferns. The design for these is based on mountain male-fern (Dryopteris oreades), though as they appear quite small on the Banner design, and unlike the pearlwort and wood avens flowers, they’ve been stylised to the point where they’re not recognisable as any fern in particular….
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…
Last time, I was just concentrating on the largest of the wood avens, to demonstrate shading with split stitch. I’ve now done the rest of the flowers’ petals in the same way. As most of the flowers are pretty small, I only worked a band of stitches in the lightest shade, 0104, on the next-largest…
With the petals outlined with buttonhole stitch, I can now fill them in with split stitch. Though there are other techniques for filling in an area with stitch and for shading with different coloured threads, with long and short stitch probably the most popular, I prefer split stitch. To me, it can give a very…
As I mentioned before, I’m using buttonhole stitch, or blanket stitch, to define and reinforce the edges of all the flowers, so that they can be cut out at a later stage. With the petals of the first sheet of wood avens to do next, the first step is to buttonhole stitch around each of…
The green bits on the wood avens are far bigger and more pronounced than on the pearlwort flowers, so need a bit of shading to give them life. Previously, I’d buttonhole stitched round the edges of all six flowers on the sheet in the lighter of the two shades I’m using. I then worked a…
The next sheet I’m going to do is of wood avens (Geum urbanum). Wood avens, also called herb bennet, is a pretty flower with yellow petals and pronounced green sepals. Visually, it has rather more going on than the pretty but rather plain St John’s-wort/pearlwort I’ve just done, so has a little more opportunity for…
With the petals outlined with buttonhole stitch, they now need to be filled in. I’m going to use split stitch for this, partly because it’s historically accurate, but also because I like it. I’ve nothing against satin stitch or long and short, but for my own work, I prefer the subtlety of shading and the…