Hope you all had a lovely holiday with your friends and families. I think I forgot to mention that I would be off from work for two weeks over the holidays. I'm taking advantage of the off time to finish a few projects and get ahead on others. One of which is the Bearded Iris. The last time I showed this piece I had put in the veins on the petals. I wasn't sure that I would like it once it was finished but I guess I should have put more faith in Alison.
As soon as the petals were outlines with gold twist, everything just fell into place. I still would have preferred a different color for the petals than this beige but it looks much better now.
The last step was to put in the beard of the iris. It was kind of weird, we had to overstretch a strand of bright check and then crumple it up. I would have never thought of doing this one my own.
I spent a whole day just doing cutwork for the stem. I had a hard time with the angles and unpicked it a few times. It's stitched with three kinds of purl and the bright check purl kept throwing me off as it's bigger than the other two purls.
I normally love chipping but I found this a little harder to do. Random is not something my brain does easily and in this case I had to do it with three different purls which increased the complexity. To help I took a break to work on the little bud before going back to finish all the chipwork. Sometimes a break helps things along.
Here it is all done. I finished it around noon on a sunny day, so I was able to take nice pictures. You can really see the color of that velvet and it looks lovely with the gold.
I'm hoping to take it to the framer sometime next week since I'll still be off work and will have time.
Now that this piece is finished, I can now spend all my time on my Japanese embroidery piece. I still have lots to do and only a few days to do them before the new year comes. Once the new years rolls in I will be starting brand new projects.
As soon as the petals were outlines with gold twist, everything just fell into place. I still would have preferred a different color for the petals than this beige but it looks much better now.
The last step was to put in the beard of the iris. It was kind of weird, we had to overstretch a strand of bright check and then crumple it up. I would have never thought of doing this one my own.
I spent a whole day just doing cutwork for the stem. I had a hard time with the angles and unpicked it a few times. It's stitched with three kinds of purl and the bright check purl kept throwing me off as it's bigger than the other two purls.
I normally love chipping but I found this a little harder to do. Random is not something my brain does easily and in this case I had to do it with three different purls which increased the complexity. To help I took a break to work on the little bud before going back to finish all the chipwork. Sometimes a break helps things along.
Here it is all done. I finished it around noon on a sunny day, so I was able to take nice pictures. You can really see the color of that velvet and it looks lovely with the gold.
I'm hoping to take it to the framer sometime next week since I'll still be off work and will have time.
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Congratulations on the finish--it's beautiful. The petals look wonderful--they look to have movement and vibration.
ReplyDeleteYes, random chipping is hard to get properly random - but you can comfort yourself that the onlooker will be so dazzled that they are unlikely to spot any less-random sections.
ReplyDeleteThe blue sets it off wonderfully well, doesn't it!
Glorious finished iris. The beige petals put me off but it really suits the finished puece especially with that wonderful blue background.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful finish. I agree, a cream colour might have looked good rather than the beige.
ReplyDeleteWow, it's a beautiful finish! I'm glad you saw it to the end. There are so many interesting things going on with this project, so I guess even if you are not completely happy with the colours, it still was a worthwhile experience!
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