After taking the piece home, it took a number of months for me to pick it up again, but once I did, I worked on it consistently. The central area was also filled in using Silk Shading. I started as usual by split stitching along the contours of the design. It then took a little guess work trying to decide which direction the Silk Shading needed to be worked. I started with areas around the leaves, but the direction was sometimes hard to maintain. In the triangular sections (as you can see below in the first image) I perhaps should have started at the wider end of the area, but the results eventually turned out fine. The design uses pearl purl to hide any messy edging where the sections of the Silk Shading meet.
Once the outlines were created using both gold and silver pearl purl, I then added the spangles and applied a small circle of felt to the middle of the design. This eventually would be covered in chipping. Chipping is a technique which involves first the cutting of check purl. This is a metal tubular thread which is cut into small pieces. Using a double waxed thread (you need to run the thread through a piece of bee’s wax) you then thread a piece as you would a bead and apply it to the felt. In Sarah’s design, felt was not applied on the smaller sections above the leaves, but as these sections were so small, trying to first apply a very small bit of felt would have been awkward.
I first applied the (silver) chipping to these areas as well as a few in the central circle. Finally, cutting up some royal blue check purl, I applied the blue sparkly bits to the middle of the design and it was complete! I had it framed at a fantastic local framer’s, but don’t have a picture of the piece in its frame just yet, but I think you can see that it turned out well!
la mise aux points 