Japanese Embroidery Phase 2-3 - Flax-Leaf Effect

I've had a very slow two weeks, so I was very happy to wake up early yesterday morning with the urge to stitch. I think it had something to do with the sun shining brightly and that I didn't have to be at work on account of it being a national holiday.

I decided to take out Hiogi and tackle the flax-leaf effect paulownia leaf. I figured it should be a cinch since it was one I was already familiar with.

What I didn't plan on were my hands being so cold I couldn't twist my thread. It kept slipping, instead of twisting. I've tried washing them in hot water, clapping and rubbing them together. It would work with one strand before my hands became too cold again. I guess I have poor circulation right now.

Luckily the following steps didn't require twisted thread, so I was able to move along.

I wasn't a hundred percent sold on the colors initially when I saw them side by side, but stitched they look great. I'm really happy I don't have a stash of silks as I would have been tempted to change the color.

One more off my list.

• finish sayagata cloud
• finish shippo cloud
• finish the snow flake in the upper right corner
• finish the woven effect paulownia
• finish the tie dye effect paulownia
• start and finish the flax leaf effect paulownia
• start and finish the separated single layer paulownia (low priority)

Next Sunday is my monthly Japanese embroidery meeting, so I'll have to decide what my goal will be. I'm not sure I want to start the last paulownia leaf, so it'll have to be either the shippos or the snow flake. I have the week to decide.

Not Much Progress

As much as I was hoping to get some stitching done over the weekend, very little happened. I did finish stretching my Japanese embroidery piece. I thought the framer would be waiting after me, but it turns out that I'm the one who will be waiting after THEM. It's fine though, I'm in no real rush.

I've tried to pick up a few of my projects over the past few days but I'm just not into it. I decided to stick to simpler pieces for now, like this hedebo piece. This is Hedebo Starbust by Jette Roy Finlay-Heath, a kit I bought at seminar in Newfoundland. There is a lot of pre-work to do in this piece so not much to show for now. I pull it out every now and then, and so far put in about 30 hours. It's a great piece to work on when I want to keep my hands busy but not think too much. Plus, not having to worry about changing colors is great. So it suits my current mood perfectly.

April TUSAL

I did mainly Japanese embroidery in April so there wasn't much in my jar this month until this weekend. All the white thread is from a Japanese embroidery piece but not from stitching. It's the lacing thread on my bouquet.

Last Friday, I cut the lacing and removed my piece from the frame and started the long process of stretching the fabric over foam core. I worked on it all of Sunday and am still going at it. So sadly no stitching update from me this week. I'm hoping to get this done before the end of the week so I can do some stitching this weekend.

Japanese Embroidery Phase 2-3 - Woven effect, Tie Dye & Sayagata

Hope everyone had a lovely Easter weekend! I had a very productive long weekend. I took out Hiogi and worked on completing a few of the elements we had started in class.

The first element is the woven effect. Towards the end I noticed there was something wrong but it's not very noticeable from afar. I think I might have made a mistake in the third step when we had to tie down the gold thread. Something to improve on for next time.

The second element I finished is the tie dye effect. Once I got going, I did this by eye. I'm surprised at how nice this came out. I've seen this technique done in books with different color combinations and they look lovely. Now I can say I can stitch it.

The last element I completed is the sayagata cloud, which was very near the end. It was only missing some of the lightning. After that it was a matter of removing my temporary holding stitches and couching everything down.

All of them need to be outlined, but that's being done in the next class I think. Still that's three elements to strike off my to-do list:

• finish sayagata cloud
• finish shippo cloud
• finish the snow flake in the upper right corner
• finish the woven effect paulownia
• finish the tie dye effect paulownia
• start and finish the flax leaf effect paulownia
• start and finish the separated single layer paulownia (low priority)

I'm going to try and work on some of my other projects for a bit though. Otherwise, I will have nothing to work on during my monthly Japanese embroidery meetings.

Last week I received a comment from someone who was a noreply-comment. Nicole M. asked: i noticed on your fabric the leaves have the veins drawn in. But when you are doing your stitches, they don't seem to be used for anything. It that right? Is there a reason that those type of details are on your ground fabric when you don't seem to be using them for anything?

Here is an answer but don't take my word for it as I'm still learning. Often in Japanese embroidery designs are created by cutting up pieces and putting them together in a way that is pleasing for them. I have a few design books at home that have multiple pages of how chrysanthemums are drawn for example. You pick the shape you like (rounded or pointed petals), drawn from the side or on top,.. and combine it together with other elements to create a whole new design to stitch. The leaves you see in my piece are called paulownia leaves and that's how they draw them in Japan. You can stitch these in green to look like the leaf and put in veins (one of them will be), but it just so happens that they decided to embroider the others using different effects.

Japanese Embroidery Phase 1 - Finished!

In my last post, I mentioned I was going to try and join the phase 1 group on Saturday and/or Sunday to stitch on my own piece. I'm happy to say I was able to join both days.

I spent all of Saturday hunched down over my piece doing stitching stems and veins. Taking occasional breaks to watch a demonstration.

 

On Sunday morning, one of the ladies asked the teacher if she will cover the finishing process in the class. Normally, this is done in a purely verbal fashion as no one has a finished piece available for a demonstration. However, seeing as I was so close to the end, someone jokingly said something along the lines of "well if Dima finishes her piece today, we can have a demo".

As I only had the upper two branches, the valerian stems and some veins left to do, I was game to try and finish it. So I put blinders on and got to it. I was actually quite happy to offer it up for demonstration purposes as I was dreading this part a tiny bit.

The finishing process has many steps like doing a final inspection of the piece to make sure nothing was forgotten and cleaning it of all dusts (it has been on the frame for almost two years). These are normal steps to be expected. What's not is using paste at the back. Below you see wheat paste that our teacher cooked in the microwave.

With a pinkie finger, this paste is applied to the back of the embroidery.

The piece is then wiped at the back with a damp cloth. Now comes the fun (and scary part). You get a very hot iron, place a wet cloth on it and use it to steam the piece from below. It was cool to see the steam rising from the piece.

(click on the post to see the video below)

I had to leave my piece at my friend's to dry overnight and went to pick it up yesterday. I'm hoping to go to the framer this weekend to pick out a frame. It will be a while before I can share final pictures as I'll need to stretch it on foam core and bring it back to the shop for the final framing.

I made an animation of the piece as it progressed. If you're interested in statistics, here is some data: I started on October 26, 2017 and finished April 14, 2019. It took 176.25 hours over a period of 43 days to stitch. This includes unpicking and redoing a few elements like the cords.

(click on the post to see the animation below)

Japanese Embroidery Phase 2-3 - Class Day 4

It's the last day of class and we still have two leaves to cover. The first order of business was to finish the flat silk foundation. 

Once that's done, I can start the steps to product the tie dye effect, or shibori in Japanese.

It's a lovely effect but I'm not sure how I feel about ruining the perfectly smooth layer of silk I had at the beginning. Someone commented on Instagram that it looked like spilled quicksilver, which was a really good description.

Unfortunately, I didn't have time to start stitching the third leaf. We did spend a few minutes discussing how to stitch it, so I should be okay. I'm not worried though, if I have questions I can email the teacher or leave that leaf for the next session.

Now I'm sure many of you have counted and there are not three leaves but four leaves inside the fan. The reason why we left it out, is that we should already know how to stitch it. It's the exact same pattern we stitched on the paper wrapping of the bouquet and is called flax-leaf effect.

After four days of class, we have lots of work ahead of us before the next session which will be in the fall. Here is a list of things I'd like to get completed before then:

• finish sayagata cloud
• finish shippo cloud
• finish the snow flake in the upper right corner
• finish the woven effect paulownia
• finish the tie dye effect paulownia
• start and finish the flax leaf effect paulownia
• start and finish the separated single layer paulownia (low priority)

There is one more session this weekend for a group of students starting phase 1. I will be joining them either today and/or tomorrow with my own phase 1 for some quiet time to finish it.

Japanese Embroidery Phase 2-3 - Class Day 3

On the third day of class, we decided to work on the paulownia leaves that are within the fan. Each leaf is stitched using a different technique. The leaf we decided to start with requires a foundation of twisted thread. I decided to make mine extra long so I wouldn't be constantly starting and stopping. 

We spent the morning putting in foundation.

Once the foundation is put in, there are four additional "layers" that go on top. I had time to start the third layer, so this leaf is well on it's way to be completed.

Here is how it looks so far. Once it's been completed, it will look like it's been woven with a hint of gold peeking out.

Since we wanted to cover the other two leaves the next day, we needed to get moving on putting in foundation stitches. The second leaf is covered in flat stitching, my favorite as no twisting is required.

I was able to make good progress before we stopped for the day. At this point, I can confidently finish the blue paulownia leaf on my own.