Honeysuckle

I have been working on the honeysuckle design...

... in fact it has turned into two projects. The smaller design will be perfect for my 2 day class later in the year and participants should be able to almost finish it in that time. I prefer that people leave my classes with so little left to do on their projects that they are able to finish it comfortably. If anyone prefer to do a larger project - well that option is there too.

 I love choosing colours, don't you? I might colour my drawings as a rough guide, the real colour choices comes when I get my hands on the threads. Usually I have a pretty clear idea in my head of the overall colour scheme I want to use but the subtle changes that happen when you put the various shades next to one another are always exciting and fun to play with.

Traditionally stumpwork was worked on ivory silk. I find that the ivory grounds can make the embroidery look rather stark and have embroidered on coloured silk a couple times and the results have been rather good, I thought. I have a piece of pale green silk, which could work well, perhaps. After all, flowers in nature are surrounded by green, aren't they? On the other hand, the project is small and the colour might be a bit overpowering, so perhaps the ivory silk broad cloth is the better choice...

While pondering over the fabric choice, I have been playing with how to get the flower petals to look and feel how I envisage them. I want to make the unopened flowers really plump and smooth, while the open flowers are partially 'floating' above the fabric. The unopened flowers were pretty straight forward - padded satin stitch is perfect and by adding several layers of padding at the rounded end I can get them quite fat and lovely.
The unopened flowers were a bit trickier to get get right. For an introduction class, needle-weaving will provide a semi detached petal that is not too difficult to stitch. A single strand of silk proved to be much too fine and didn't give the petals enough body and lift - they just sit flat and a bit limp looking against the fabric. I had a go with a perle silk (the purple one in the picture) - it looks great, but is not easy to handle.
Perhaps two strands of silk over spokes of perle 12 will do the trick? Any ideas anyone? I will let you know how it goes.

Hope you are enjoying a lovely Mother's day and getting spoiled as you deserve,
Anna