Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Winter wreath - tracing paper and pearlescent floss

Using tracing paper and a micron pen

After all the chalk marks on my navy blue linen faded, I decided to try stitching on tracing paper.

I was curious to see how much I'd departed from the original - I'd just been eyeballing everything as I stitched...

Checking my progress

Looks like I make things bigger when eyeballing the pattern... I didn't stress, because I'm not aiming for an exact reproduction.

Stitching over tracing paper

I stitched over the tracing paper on a big french knot dandelion - I was inspired by this great tutorial by Mary Corbet on Needle n Thread. By the way, I'm really enjoying stitching with that Nun's Boilproof vintage floss.

Couching the stems

Next I couched the dandelion stems, using more Nun's Boilproof vintage floss.

finished Dandelion - tracing paper method

Here's the finished Dandelion - the tracing paper did help me stitch those knots more carefully. The only drawback was of course, when I removed the tracing paper, several knots were pulled.

I think I'll do a combination of tracing paper and just eyeballing for the rest of the dandelions.

Trying some Pearlescent Effects floss

I tried some Pearlescent Effects floss on the French knots in the center of that large white flower. The texture is really rough, and it's not French-knot friendly, but it has a nice icy, iridescent look:

Pearlescent floss in the large flower center

Next, I added a line of gold metallic DMC floss, couched around the flower center:

Gold couched threads around the center

Here's all my progress so far - I'm still deciding if I'll add the berries.

Progress so far

Any thoughts on the tracing paper or Pearlescent floss? I'm curious if any of you have tried either!

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