Wednesday, September 12, 2018

Japanese Embroidery Phase 1 - Lattice Work

This coming Saturday is my monthly Japanese embroidery meeting. I like to show up at meetings with at least an idea of what I want to work on. At this month's meeting I want to finish the wrapping paper. The last layer of which is the flax leaf top stitching. Before I can do that I need to tie down the lattice I had put in.


In order to tie down the lattice, I needed to create my own couching silk. Basically, I'm taking a single strand of silk, splitting it into four and then combining two of them into a single twisted thread. I was mainly doing this by eye. Sometimes it was easy, and at other times it was very hard pulling the silk apart as it tangles.

(click on the post to see the animation below)


To give you an idea, from right to left: one strand of flat silk, half a strand of flat silk and the last two are a quarter strand of flat silk.


Since I was making couching silk and working on lattices, I figured this was a great time to work on the other lattice on this piece: the valerians.


I love how they look quilted. I wonder if I did them properly though as there are horizontal lines showing. I guess I will find out at the meeting on Saturday. I think once I get the wrapping paper done, I need to look at doing some Japanese knots. There are many elements that need it, like the chrysanthemums, valerians and bush clover flowers.


6 comments:

  1. I too see the horizontal lines, but don't know how you can avoid that (looks pretty good, though). Looking forward to what you learn about this.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is another beautiful piece. Your stitching is always so neat and precise. I also love the way the flowers catch the light.

    ReplyDelete
  3. How beautiful! I love the shine the silk has and the colors are gorgeous.

    ReplyDelete
  4. It looks good so far. I don't see any horizontal lines!

    ReplyDelete
  5. That lattice work looks great! I was wondering what would happen to those big, smooth surfaces.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks for the detail on how you are using the threads, I found that very interesting, though I imagine it is quite difficult to split them!

    ReplyDelete