Historical Sampler – Stylized Borage

This is from

http://tinyurl.com/6ygpfh

and is a Pillow for a cross with depiction of stylized vegetal ornamentation

Late 16th – Early 17th century

I am going to do a borage from it. It’s very stylized.

 

I had originally drawn it leaving room for the paillettes in the centre, but decided to modify the petals and ovary to meet in the middle, and will put the paillettes over the top.

Hence a little design line modification using thread instead of pen :

 

I’m going to do it in Laid Embroidery, with the two horizontal petal in silver, and the others in gold. (with matching couching threads in silk)

I attempted a petal in silver passing thread.

I did not have a good time. *grin*

The passing thread is quite stiff, and the petal quite tiny. I lost the ‘pear’ shape of the petal, and got an oval instead :

I was using Mary Brown’s Technique for laying thread for irregular shapes. It ends with only one thread in the middle. My attempt just doesn't look 'good'.

It took 2 hours, and I just couldn’t get the passing to obey me, even tho I had my nose to the canvas, and was keeping the tweezers in my teeth in between very frequent uses of them in an attempt to bend the thread into shape.

I think it’s a case of inexperience with using the passing thread (this is my first time) in combination with a very small irregular shape.

I'm going to have another go using a modern silver metallic thread, that should be more malleable to my needs to get a better petal shape.

I'm having thoughts about using Lurex for the gold petals - that'll be more malleable than the gold passing.