Historical Sampler – A Googly Eyed Bug and a Leaf

Here’s the googly eyed bug and a detached buttonhole leaf.

The bug

I detached buttonholed his wings in silver Au Ver A Soie silk thread, and outlined them using some vintage artificial silk (from Sally- thanks Sally!), angling the needle to go partially under the buttonholing to get a thin a line as possible.

Without the outlining, I didn’t think his wings stood out enough.

The eyes were done with three stitches each, then circled in chain stitch. This is a kind of backwards way to do it, but with so few stiches there was ‘stepping’ in the height of the stitches and this way I could adjust where the chain stitch went, and get a clear circular outline, rather than doing it the other way around and partially covering the chain stitch.

French knots for pupils.

I do wonder if there is a better stitch I could have used for his eyes.

I didn’t have much room to use the pattern from the body of that V&A bug I showed in the last post – just two lines of red and one of blue.

I think he looks sufficiently goofy.

The Detached Buttonhole Leaf

This was done in olive green YLI silk. And then three strands of yellow YLI in stem stitch down the middle.

I’m becoming more comfortable with detached buttonhole stitch. I’m finding that the hardest things are

* finding the next loop from the row above to knot around. Often it’s a blind search with the needle to find where the needle will next go through easily.

I have been known to go back and insert extra stitches to cover a missed loop but I’ve found it’s a good idea to do it after finishing the whole piece. Inserting extra stitches means inserting the needle through the ground (so it can come up and around the two threads) and this ties the net to the ground. This means that the net  isn’t free to do it’s little bit of stretching when it’s attached to the bottom row.

* NOT getting knots in the thread because if the thread knots and then is pulled tight into the ‘buttonhole knot’, well, insert swear words here. (I went back with the needle and put a stitch through the knot to sew it down to the backing so it wouldn’t stick up. Hardly ideal, but I couldn’t see any other way out of it).