Embroidered Book Cover - The Cornflower

Well, I think it's a cornflower.

I'm very very pleased with it.



I used some ideas from Mary of NeedleNThread - the construction of the first flower described in http://www.needlenthread.com/2007/07/silk-work-embroidery-sampler-update.html

She wrote :-
"This is the center of the flower. The image is a bit fuzzy (!) This is how I stitched it: I began with a light gold Soie d'Alger, and backstitched around the circle. Then, inside the backstitch (so, on the inside of the circle), I stitched one layer of loose satin stitch in the Soie d'Alger. Then, I satin stitched the whole circle (going outside over the edge of the backstitch) in a flat silk, in gold. Then, I worked a square lattice in the dark red, and couched the intersections with the lightest coral in the flower. Then I worked a stem stitch around the circle, using two strands of Soie d'Alger in the medium red."

That's pretty much what I did for the pod of the flower. (I'm sure there is a proper name for it). I wasn't going to couch down the brown thread which criss crosses on top, but I noticed that they were moving around quite of their own volition, mucking up the pattern. I used the same brown to couch them down and I like the effect.

I did french knots for the centre of the flower.

For the petals, I copied the shape of the outer edge and did it in stem stitch in the darkest blue about 2/3 of the way up each petal. I blended the dark and medium blue inside this stem stitch 'barrier', and then put plain light blue between the barrier and the outer edge. The light blue looks padded, but it isn't.

I also used satin stitch, (!!!) instead of my usual chain stitch! It's a bit mucky in places.

The light blue is very very shiny and lovely. I have to wonder if it's an ordinary DMC thread. I recently bought two floss boxes full of threads on ebay and there are a few non-DMCs in there but the type is usually marked on the card. Not for this one.

The small leaf with the orange red as the darkest colour along the spine of the leaf turned out in an interesting way. There is a gold colour as the medium colour but it can't really be seen. But as I was embroidering (what over-sewing?) I noticed that having it there enhanced the colour of the orange red. I'm going to have to use that colour combination again to tie the colours of that leaf in, because it looks a bit lonely at the moment.

Since I'm not going to be using sequins after all, I've got a bit of space to play with.

I'm going to put in the stems (in stem stitch) that I've marked, and then do more leaves for the carnation. I haven't got a clue what the gold thread that I'm using to couch the elements is. Something I found in my sewing box, and I have to detangle a length each time I need some. I just hope I don't run out before I finish this front cover given I've still got two sides of the cover to edge using it.

I've curled the ends of the stems. I have a tiny scrap of vintage material with just a few small gold sequins and matching beads (about the size of Mill Hill beeds) on it. I'm going to put a sequin, with a bead on top, at the end of each of these curls.

The leaves are copied from :-


and I'll use that lovely light blue for the silvery appearing parts of the leaves. And the greens I've already used in the carnation erm, pod, and bud for the greens.