Colour play canvas work 5

I started on the top left corner with a stitch new to me, Crescent stitch, and then played around with scale and shape; a few are more rectangular than square. It also means that more of the background canvas is visible, maybe too much. I’ll assess that further down the line.

The zigzag stiching continues with the variegated ribbon, which isn’t good to stitch with. It catches if you so much as look at it, but picks up the colours in the copper so beautifully. Then I used a gold-ish stranded, which is much better to stitch.

I carried on filling in with straight stitches down the right hand side.

A row of burgundy wool zigzags to leave a gap between the block of them, more straight stitches to anchor the felt, the pink strip, and then an eyelet into a corner of a zigzag.

It looked OK, so I continued with different size eyelets in the same gold-ish colour, and more straight stitches in the very strange peach-coloured cord. This one unravels at the end if you are not really careful pulling it through, but it has a lovely texture, and again is worth the effort.

More straight stitches fill in around the eyelets, but I realised that the burgundy wool had gone one hole too high at the top (difficult to see as it is so near the staples), as well as some of the straight stitches to the left. I unpicked them before stopping. It’s nearly there now, and it’s come on fairly quickly over the last month or so. (Colour play, if you missed the beginning.)

Colour play canvas work 4

This week’s progress has involved some unpicking, much as I am reluctant to unpick! I’d torn the edges of the pink backing fabric from my flower for the Great Scunthorpe Embroidery Challenge. I wanted the frayed edges to spill over the velvet and the outer edge, and I’d already done the stepped diagonal stitches, which I liked and didn’t want to cover up. It wasn’t very much to unpick, and was soon re-done.

One of the torn scraps was anchored down with straight stitches on the left hand side. Then a petal of the hand made felt was attached over the corner.

I then echoed the pink straight stitches attaching the velvet at the bottom, to attach the bottom edge of the pink fabric. I did more rows of irregular straight stiches in different colours and weights of thread, including a row of the knitted ribbon which matched the greeny gold sari silk strip perfectly. The flower is just laid on top to see how it will look…..

…… before doing more pink straight stiches and starting to fill in between the two rows of zigzag.

I put more knotted stitches near the eyelash yarn, in different textures and colours; they could hardly be called French or Bullion knots! There are more cushion stitches near the bottom right, coming up to meet the straight stitches.

The bottom is nearly finished, leaving across the top to do. It’s fun to work on, and the colours are feeling more comfortable than when I started. It just needs a final push before I get distracted with the next project at “In the stitch zone”.