In my last posting “More about the rose embroidery for my friends hood .5 – the rose leaf embroidery or my first “silk shading” 🙂” I showed you how I established the foundation for the silk shading technique by creating an initial layer along the outer border of one of my rose leaves.
And today we are going to take a look at the second step concerning the rose leaf and the above mentioned silk shading technique.
This second step requires the use of a slightly different green shade with which the remaining section of the rose leaf is filled in. At first sight the difference between this two used green shades might be just marginal but it adds a slight three-dimensional effect to each rose leaf.
And now let’s take a look at how I worked the second layer of the silk shading in order to get this nice effect – enjoy! 😀
Ok, let’s refresh the memory a little with the last embroidery progress picture from my preceding posting:
At the picture above you can see the very first layer for the silk shading technique worked in the “long and short stitch” along the outer border of the leaf. I started the “long and short stitch” every time at the border and only varied the stitch length towards the inside of the section. If you have any questions about this section, please see my previous posting for more details.
After finishing the first embroidery layer for the silk shading, I secured the end of my thread by carefully working some backstitches into the backside of my embroidery, as you can see on the picture on the right. This is a quite convenient technique as it only takes about three or four backstitches to successfully secure ones thread if you have a quite firm embroidery on the backside. However, if you choose to do so, please keep your stitches very shallow to avoid stitching through the front layer of your embroidery.
Then I threaded a new thread – a slightly darker green silk thread from the Handweavers Sudio in London, UK – and secured this new thread as I just finished the previous thread – with some simple backstitches through the backside of my embroidery. And then I started my very first stitch:
As you can see on the picture above, I am working my stitch from the outside of the embroidered section into the embroidery. Maybe you remember that I wrote in my previous posting that I am not really following the silk shading technique instructions as they are described in literature. This here is the second silk shading technique step which I already mentioned in my last posting which I decided to do differently.
If you want to compare – Mary Corbet posted a very interesting Long & Short Stitch Shading lesson on her blog Needle ‘n Thread which shows the technique as it is described in subject-specific literature:
Long & Short Stitch Shading, Lesson 2: Inside the Box
I highly encourage you to try the silk shading technique as described by literature and shown above by Mary Corbet. After working it this way, you can still decide which version you prefer for your own work. However, I, personally, am more comfortable to work the technique the opposite way as it feels to me like I have more control over every single stitch this way.
But now back to the embroidery project on hand – after placing the very first stitch in the slightly darker green silk thread, I continued to add more stitches proceeding to the left. This time I worked the “long and short stitch” a little bit different as I did the first time – I kept the stitch length similar and just offset the stitch according to the long and short stitch of the previous section:
…therefore I think that it is technically speaking not really a “short and long stitch” anymore but the resulting effect is quite similar. And here a picture of the finished second layer:
This is the point where I could have easily introduced another color or shade of green but the section is small enough that the little shading effect along the border was all I wanted. Therefore I filed in the last part of the section with more stitches which were all slightly off-set to each other:
…and voila:
And after finishing a section I normally like to use my needle like a small brush and “brush” the embroidery and the embroidery thread a little – always starting from the outside and going towards the middle. I don’t know if it really makes a difference but it seems to me like I can smoothen out some little details this way and slightly improve the placing of the silk threads. However – it just something I do for my peace of mind which might actually not be really necessary.
And here a picture of the “brushed” leaf:
As I already wrote above – the differences might be little but going with my needle through the silk embroidery really gives me a certain peace of mind… 🙂
And here a picture of two finished rose leaves with “silk shading” embroidery taken from above:
…and voila – all five rose leaves are finished:
Though the two different shades of green are not that obvious, I really like how this slight difference brightens the embroidery a little. I think that the rose leaves don’t appear as massive as they would if I had worked them only in one shade of green. 🙂 [emember_protected not_for=3-4 do_not_show_restricted_msg=1]
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I hope you enjoyed todays posting. And in my next posting I will show you how I added some gold thread along the borders of the rose leaves. 😀
More postings about the rose embroidery for this 14th century hood project can be found here:
- More about the rose embroidery for my friends hood .1 – the preparatory work
- -“- .2 – starting the surface couching
- -“- .3 – my surface couching embroidery for the center of the roses
- -“- .4 – a little pelican and the red silk embroidery around the middle
- -“- .5 – the rose leaf embroidery or my first “silk shading” 🙂
…and even more postings about this 14th century hood project for my friend, Elisenda de Luna can be found here:
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