Facebook threw up an interesting memory today – on 5th June last year (a Saturday) I completed my Goldwork module by handing in Bruce the golden kangaroo, a mere eight months after finishing the Jacobean module. That sort of time frame is firmly out of the question for my Canvaswork, but I felt rather pleased that I could mark Bruce’s anniversary with a finish-within-the-project: yes, the red tulip is complete!

Don’t expect a drumroll and a reveal quite yet – I’d like to keep him as the pièce de résistance of this FoF, so first here is some sampling I did for the smaller tulips. On the RSN’s Facebook page I came across a picture of a canvaswork piece with daffodils done in ribbon, and I remembered that I had picked some suitably coloured hand-dyed silk ribbons when I started this module, some of them inherited from my mother-in-law. I set about trying out various ways of depicting small, smaller and tiny tulips.

There is a very bright yellow tulip which looks less smooth than the tulips surrounding it, so I thought it might work well in ribbon satin stitch, as the edges of the ribbons would overlap and curl up and add some texture. To indicate an edge between petals I worked some of the vertical lines in two stitches. On the whole I like the look of it, but the colour is too dark and not bold enough; I will try again with a slightly lighter yellow ribbon. I also need to ask the tutor about the tiny bit of canvas visible along the dividing line (blue arrow); I can’t see how to cover that and still keep the edge.

I then tried some tiny tulips. One in simple satin stitch (didn’t much like the shape), one a lazy daisy (some canvas showing), and one a fan of five stitches (quite nice but too wide).

The fan with the two outer stitches taken out looked better, as did some lazy daisies with a straight stitch underneath. Yes, I can definitely see this working!

Back to the big tulip. But before I show you the finished article I’ll write a bit more about the process of creating this tulip, and like Julie Andrew I’ll start at the very beginning – the photograph on which my canvas design is based.

Right from the start I’d envisaged this tulip (for some reason I think of him as George) in a diagonal couched stitch. Fortunately, as I’ve come to realise after looking through several canvaswork books, you can do pretty much anything and there will be a name for it, including half a dozen variations by adding “vertical”, “horizontal”, “double”, “lengthened” and so on. The stitch I had in mind could be covered by “diagonal Bokhara couching”, “web stitch” or “Italian couching”. The idea was to couch long diagonal stitches in other colours, varying the placement and density of the couching stitches to create the shading. Because of the very dark shadow on the bottom left, I started out with a burgundy Caron Watercolours couched in equally burgundy Needlepoint Inc stranded silk.

After a while I added some lighter red couching stitches to create the curved shadow, then changed the foundation thread to an orangy-red shade of Watercolours couched in two shades: densely couched, four-strand burgundy, and two-strand red which became more widely-spaced after a while.

As I got near to where the large petal meets the smaller one on the right, I stopped a little early, because (canvaswork being stitched from the foreground towards the back) the right-hand petal should have been stitched first. This would be done in diagonals running in the opposite direction to the main petal. I chose some lighter couching threads to replicate the lighter shade of the thin petal.

But after a while it became clear that the petal was too wide, and also that couching in two strands didn’t give the dense coverage needed to achieve the required lightness. Out came the petal, and in came five needles with different four-strand blends, applied (as closely as possible) according to the photograph. It took quite a few hours, but then the new slimline petal was done, and I could get back to the main petal.

By the way, about halfway through this tulip I decided to try clamping the slate frame in the Lowery stand instead of using my lap stand; usually I would clamp any frame on the side, but I’d seen someone clamp the top of the slate frame so I thought I’d give that a go. Well, it works very well indeed! It doesn’t even need weights on the bottom to keep it steady. Sitting facing the window I get a good light, and a view of the garden (albeit rather blurry when I’m wearing my stitching glasses).

Before tackling the final part of the main petal I filled in the horizontally couched, rather dark bit at the bottom, then the highlight at the top of the main petal was couched in, and finally the inside of the right-hand petal, in horizontal couching like the bottom bit. This was unpicked after the first five or so rows had been couched because the last stitch of the big petal, which I’d debated about for yonks as to how long it should be, turned out to be too short after all, and I couldn’t correct that while the horizontal stitches were in place. Heigh-ho, best to get it right. One hole longer made that last diagonal look much better, and then I could finish the final part.

There is one tiny bit of canvas showing between the top foundation stitch of the right-hand petal and the foundation stitches of the horizontal part, but it really isn’t feasible to remedy that by inserting more of the Watercolours thread. I will ask if it is a big problem; if so, I could perhaps sneak some silk thread underneath the foundation stitches in a camouflaging colour.

Be that as it may, the tulip is finished and I am very pleased with it. In fact I feel so chuffed that even if the rest of the piece never quite manages to do justice to the photograph, it won’t matter. This is my little canvaswork triumph