Adding Paper

The whole purpose of this embroidery course, is to push the boundaries, so now, paper has been added to a piece of hand embroidered cloth.

This is silk paper that has been machine embroidered, and then embellished by hand.

The paper was carefully cut out around the machine embroidered flowers and then very gently stitched to the cloth.  To do that. I've used a mixture of french knots, blanket stitch, bullion knots and blanket stitch lace.

It's taken a while...

... but I'm finally getting into the embroidery course and having fun.  I'm beginning to catch up with all that has been going on, and hopefully won't be too far behind when the next lesson is released.

When we started playing with paper, I made a concertina fan out of a sheet of silk paper.  I've cut this in half and added some hand embroidery.  There are woven bars to keep the sides open and on the inside I've added splashes of colour with web stitches and french knots.  To keep the fan in shape, I've used needle woven bars front and back.

Remember the scrim pockets?  I've now taken these a stage further, applying the scrim over fabric and vintage embroidery.

The scrim has then been embellished with hand embroidery.

Small holes were cut in the scrim and then fixed with french knots, and there are lots of wrapped threads to form a lace effect.  This allows the fabric and embroidery to appear from below.

 

The finished piece is quite small, and hopefully will become part of a bigger piece.

The next piece is prepared and I'm hoping for another happy stitching day today.

Silk scrim and silk paper samples

Once the fun with the sewing machine was over, it was time to use the samples in some embroidery, to embellish them and get some ideas for a larger piece.

I used the over stitched piece of paper and added it to some dupion silk.  The spiral of french knots attaches the paper to the silk.

I do like the different textures of the the knots and paper together.

I don't have a lot of vintage embroidery to use, but I do have a collection of these patterns.  The earliest I've found dated is 1933.  They would have belonged to my great grandmother and grandmother, passed down through my mum.

I used one of the transfers to stitch this.  I left one incomplete, as lots of linen has been passed down only partially stitched.

To it I added some pin tucked paper.  Holes were cut in it to form windows to the stitching underneath.  Some windows have needle weaving over them.  Attached to the bottom of the paper, is some machine stitched scrim.

This can be lifted to reveal the stitching below.

After some feedback from Karen, these ideas will be developed further.  I think I should write some notes, my brain is mulling over new ideas and forgetting some of the old ones before I've had a chance to try them.

Silk Paper

After playing with scrim, it was now time to play with silk paper.

It was fun trying out the different stitches on the paper, and to see how resilient it is.

This was a sheet, just testing out the different stitches I have on my machine

I like the edging this makes, just over stitching in circles backwards and forwards along a line, then pulling the excess paper away.

This was just to see how much I could stitch on the paper before it began to disintigrate.  The paper didn't tear, but it did stretch.  I think that a piece like this would be great for further hand embellishment

Stitching over a hole

Pin tucks and concertinas, again waiting for hand embellishment

Grids

Straight lines

Flowers

Circles, and experimenting with holes

This stitch would be great for an edge, one of my favourites.

Now I'm looking forward to combining the scrim and paper with other fabric and hand stitching.  Hopefully. a few more stitched samples will follow.