Butterfly Cords - Japanese Embroidery UK

Butterfly Cords is complete.  Yay.  Well, probably, actually I might just tweak one of those plum buds!  But apart from that it is done.  I have to say I am very pleased with how this has turned out.  It's a beautiful design produced by one of my fellow tutors for Japanese Embroidery UK.  I have thoroughly enjoyed doing cords again, it's been a while. 

The sample for this Module 5 piece has already been stitched so I've done a bit of my own thing here to experiment with different ways of doing things.  Margaret, as always, has been very patient with me as I took a few liberties with her design.

Bearing in mind our students will be seeing my version as well as the official versioin, I tried not to stray too far from the fold.  I kept colour changes from silk to silk and silk to metallic.

I did replace one cord technique for woven effect because it is my favourite.

Most of the plums were embroidered in flat silk but the new metallics we have were just so tempting I used one of them for one of the plums and two different colours for the water drops.  For the plum I twisted a very tight karayori and couched it round the edge of the petals to keep the spacing between them even.  Once complete I took the karayori out.

I think it has worked beautifully with the colour of the background fabric.

Top half of the design complete, shiny, shiny.

Remember this horrid mark from my previous post?

I drew in an extra plum blossom to cover it up. 

Nearly done.

One more colour change to complete the cord ...

And there it was, only 112 hours later (plus the 3 days in class that I managed to delete from my timer!), and no sign of that horrid mark in the bottom left.

We had day class last Saturday so on the Sunday I framed up some new pieces and made a bit of a start. 

First was a demonstration piece for use at the NEC when we are there in March.  Design courtesy of Colleen, one of our advanced students.

Second was Module 8 of our JEUK curriculum covering fuzzy effect.  I've completed one of the designs for this module but it's the only one which doesn't have at least two designs completed.  I blame it on having to go to work!

I completed the design part of this a while ago and then made a start on the embroidery. I wasn't happy with the colour choices, it just didn't look like it did in my head.  The fabric is a beautiful coral pink crepe but the white lotus which should be shining out wasn't .

I took it to class with me last November for some advice and we decided that the fabric wasn't the right colour.  I've changed it for this lovely mauve.  Now the light is getting better I'll be able to crack on with it.

Third was a small design of chrysanthemums, just for fun, because I love doing chrysanthemums.  It'll be some light relief from the fuzzy effect.

 

Keywords

Butterfly Cords | Chrysanthemums | Japanese Embroidery Academy UK | Lotus

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