Early days

I got two books for Christmas that were produced by the RSN and show technique so that is where I am stating from. They also have pictures of the sort of thing really clever capable people can come up with which is very exciting, it is always nice to know how much more there is to learn. They are  Embroidery Techniques by Sally Saunders and Essential Stitch Guides: Blackwork buy Becky Hogg.

I have decided to start with blackwork since that is covered in both books. Now being me I can't just follow one of the projects suggested but have adapted things slightly. The first project to try in Embroidery Techniques involves a number of different stitch patterns and shading so I am doing that but using different shapes. I decided on a simple flower with four petals and sketched the design on a spare bit of paper, judging the size by drawing it inside a circle traced from by smallest embroidery hoop:

Each petal and the centre will be a different stitch with the petals getting darker as they get closer to the centre. Blackwork is supposed to be done on evenweave fabric but I have never sewn on that before and as I am trying a new technique I wanted to minimise the number of new things to deal with at once. Therefore, I decided to use an offcut of 22 count aida that I already had. This is how it turned out:

I used tapestry stitch with 3 strands for the centre so it would be as dark as possible. The petals are 4 stitch patterns in 3 sizes to see how the size of the pattern affected things. All four patterns are also chosen so that they are square or circular rather than linear, ie they are the same in all directions rather than having a horizontal or vertical emphasis. The shading graduates from 1 strand at the edge to 2 strands in the centre with some extra stitches added in 1 strand to some areas to make the shadow even deeper. Unsurprisingly shading works most cleanly on the smaller patterns. I also added a stem using two thicknesses of chain stitch to create shading.

On the whole I am happy with it. If I tried again I would probably make the edges of the petals lighter by removing some stitches from the pattern and I'm not sure I like having such a harsh outline to the petals, it makes them feel even darker. I need to work on smoothing out the curves of the stem stitch edging if I am going to use it again anyway. Also, I hadn't realised how much more flexibility stitching 2 over 2 on evenweave would give. A huge number of the patterns suggested in the book used 2 over 2 stitches but with only 1 space between them. I ended up adapting and inventing pattens I could use on on aida.