A patch with gold embroidery for Catelin’s elevation dress

Now, that the elevation of my friend Catelin The Wanderer is over, I can finally share the small gold embroidery with you which I made for her elevation dress.

It is always a great pleasure and honor for me to contribute to the special days of my friends. Therefore I was very happy when Catelin asked for some embroidered patches for her dress for her upcoming Laurel elevation.

Due to being very busy with some of my own projects, I only had the time to make one embroidered patch with gold embroidery for her. Well, I thought, however busy I was, time for a small embroidery side project for a good friend like her could always be found somehow, couldn’t it… And I am very glad to say that I was able to complete my patch in a very short time and to return the finished gold embroidery to her as soon as possible. 🙂

And now let’s take a look at the completed patch – enjoy! 😀

And here two pictures to show you the lovely sparkle of the gold thread:

…and from another angle:

And before I show you some close up photos of the embroidery, some facts about this gold embroidery for you:

For the visible gold embroidery I used a gold thread which Catelin provided:

• Kreinik Metallics – Japan Thread #7 – 002J

…and the surface couching, which holds the gold thread in place, was done with some very fine yellow silk thread from the Handweaver Studio in London/UK which I had on hand. You can see the small surface couching stitches which I made with this very thin silk thread on the pictures underneath.

The embroidery kit Catelin provided also came with a second red fabric patch of a linen or linen/cotton fabric in order to back up the gold embroidery. This “back up” provides more “body” for the embroidery as well as the patch.

Before I started with the gold embroidery, I carefully mounted both patches – the patch of silk fabric at the front and the linen or linen/cotton patch at the backside – in the embroidery frame. After carefully stretching both patches to a similar but quite low tension – just enough to straighten the fabric in the embroidery frame – I secured both fabric patches in place with simple sewing stitches along the round corner of the patch. This is the dark red outline which you can see on the pictures above as I used a dark red sewing thread for this step.

And now let’s take a closer look at my surface couching stitches for the gold embroidery – first a look at one of the “scissor blades”:

…and here a close up picture of the top part of the “scissors”:

And last but not least – here a picture of the backside of my gold embroidery:

As you can see underneath, I always made sure to keep my backside as neat as possible by securing all thread ends to the backside of my fabric. This not only provides a nice looking backside, it is also helps tremendously when you need to work very fast.

Furthermore I also try to keep my stitches as regular as possible – this can be easily achieved with some practice. It also helps to use the previous stitches as a guid line for new stitches.

And here a picture of how I got rid of the surplus fabric while I was working at the gold embroidery:

I simply folded the surplus fabric to the backside and secured it with some pins into place. This way the surplus fabric remained in one place and I didn’t need to worry that it got in my way while working at it…

I hope you enjoyed my small gold embroidery side project. If you would like to learn more about this gold embroidery technique, please download my Surface Couching handout here: Medieval Embroidery Technique Handouts