Hiogi - Finishing up

From my last update, I only had a few elements left. The first one is a little snowflake near the orange cord. This is the second element done with fuzzy effect. That one was done with diagonal held stitches (you can see it here), so now we get to try the second method with vertical holding stitches. 

I felt the piece didn't have enough silver in it, so my snowflake is stitched with #1 and #2 silver thread. I used #2 for the center and #1 for the spokes. 

The metal thread is couched down with a greay silk that I twisted to make couching thread from.

The second element is the outline of gold that goes around the fan to give it's shape. This was really difficult as it started with a straight edge and then curved. When we initially did the pre-work, none of us were aware we needed to leave some space for this outline. I had a little trouble getting a nice curve near the shippo cloud as the cardboard padding kept getting in the way. So for those stitching this in future, leave enough space next to the sayagata and shippo clouds for the 1.5 #1 gold. Still I'm happy with how mine came out.

The very last element are the fan lines. Technically, I should have put these in before the outline, but I wanted to make sure my lines were plunged in the right place. This was very tedious, especially as I was at the very end. It was couch, plunge, stitch down, couch, plunge, stitch down,... 

When plunging very short strands of gold, I would always plunge one end keeping the other side still wound on the koma. Once that's done, I would cut the other end and plunge the threads making sure to hold onto the threads under the fabric. This ensures they're not pulled out accidentally.

The picture above shows the very last stitch plunged on Hiogi and it's officially done! I've already visited the framer and we picked out the mat and frame. This weekend I will be doing the pasting and then I can start lacing. I can take my time with that as my framer will be closing for the holidays. I'm honestly still in shock that it's done and will take me a few days to adjust. Not sure how much stitching will get done...

I will probably pull out the peach blossom and bird piece I started over the summer, but I've already started looking into placing an order for the next phase piece.