My last update on the RSN Canvaswork module stopped at a slimmed-down tulip, with the promise of leaves to come before class. Well, somewhat to my own surprise they did! Two of them, both in satin stitch. The first one I was going to stitch exactly as sampled, with the two halves of the leaf in vertical and horizontal satin stitch. In order to have no canvas showing I made sure to tuck the stitches in the second half neatly underneath the stitches in the first half, which also made for a rather effective leaf vein. Unfortunately horizontal and vertical stitches do create a different edge, and I was slightly worried whether the bump caused by the transition from one to the other would be frowned on. Fortunately the tutor, Kathryn, said that I was ending everything in the same line of holes, as I should, and the bump is the natural consequence of the nature of the stitches, which the assessors allow for.

The next leaf, or rather two leaves that sort of blend into each other, had a stem to contend with. As instructed I had stitched the stem first as it is further towards the front in the design; and I quickly found that working the diagonal satin stitch into the holes directly next to the stem would not do. There was canvas showing, so that meant more tucking, a lot of it, and in some awkward positions! On the left-hand side it meant coming up at an angle from underneath the big pink tulip, trying not to disturb its stitches, and going down at an angle underneath the short and therefore rather tight stitches of the stem. All this while juggling three or four needles holding different thread blends.

Still, the end result was worth it I think, especially once I’d added a thin hightlight on the right. I asked Kathryn about that and she said although generally shading and colour changes had to be achieved within the canvas stitches, an occasional outline stitched over the top was fine, especially when the width of the colour in question is so small that any stitch over a canvas thread would be too wide. I also remarked to her that although I realised the reasoning behind the back-to-front rule, it would have been so much easier to have done this the other way round! To which she replied that sometimes there were exceptions to the rule… Hmm, I could have done with that insight a bit earlier!

To be fair, that usually applies to things like ribbon stitches done over the surface of previous stitches, which is how the very small tulips overlapping the paving in my photograph will be done. But it’s good to know one can occasionally interpret the rules creatively.

Another thing I’d managed before class was a tiny bud. I did get slightly carried away with the possibilities of blending, ending up with four blends of five shades of Madeira silk in four stitches. Still, it makes for a nice bud .

Finally I sampled two variations of rose leaf stitch, a complicated one involving a crochet hook and a simpler one, both worked over a piece of stiff paper, both interesting, and neither in the least usable in my design. The combination of blue silk and green chenille thread I sampled in class for the lacy tree against the sky didn’t even have the distinction of looking interesting – the chenille was too bulky and just looked messy, besides shredding like mad. Oh well, you don’t know unless you try.

In class it was interesting to get Kathryn’s fresh view of my project, as she hadn’t seen it before. It was decided I would tackle some green stuff in the afternoon, but first I would work the pointy tulip. Split gobelin in three directions because two of the petals in the photograph have quite strong diagonal lines, with no splitting along the petal edges. Two petals which in the picture blend into each other were to be treated as one petal. Kathryn wasn’t sure I’d be able to get in the very thin light edge on the left-hand petal, but I thought if I started the stitching from that edge in a light shade and then split into it with a darker shade, it would produce something nearly narrow enough so that it wouldn’t need another outline stitch. I didn’t sample this tulip but worked it straight onto the main canvas, blending five shades of Silk Mill silk and one of Madeira as I went. The last two pictures show the finished tulip under different lighting conditions; what a difference that can make in a photograph!

I will get to the green stuff, but first let’s talk stems for a bit. When stitching the most prominent tulip stems, one had got overlooked – or perhaps I’d temporarily ignored it because unlike the others it was at an angle. Time to remedy that, as with a bit of compensation the brick stitch used for the other stems would work here as well. I started out with the same blend of five strands of dark green with one burgundy and one dark flesh, but that was too red compared to the photograph, so I took out the dark flesh and put in another green. Much better. Unfortunately this did show up the stem of the large bud on the left; it’s quite a different colour, which is fine because that reflects the photograph, but the long satin stitches don’t quite fit in. They are, as Kathryn pointed out, rather too long to be approved of without couching, but couching would break up the long lines I was after. And if those long lines were going to be broken up anyway, I might as well do this stem in the same brick stitch as the other stems and create what is known as a “stitch language” for stems throughout the piece. So one of my homework assignments is to unpick that stem and redo it it, possibly in the perle cotton used for the satin stitch, possibly in something stranded; we’ll see.

Right, leafy stuff. Having been on this particular module for some time now, Kathryn is the fourth tutor I’ve had, and she offered a fourth view (after Angela’s and the two Helens’) on the jumble of green among the tulips. Sigh. She said she quite understood I was beginning to get sampling fatigue, but she was worried that the double upright cross which I’d sampled as the largest of the three jumble patterns (as suggested by one of the Helens) would be too bulky, and would look as though it was in front of the large leaves it was surrounding instead of retreating into the background. She also felt that three different stitches was too much of a good thing. There was a stitch she couldn’t remember the name of that was really good for grasses and so on, and which could possibly be stitched on two different scales – then I would be able to do the whole jumble in what was effectively one stitch, giving coherence to it, while varying the colours to add highlights to the texture. While I stitched my pointy tulip and stem, Kathryn leafed (pun intended) through various canvas stitch books, and finally came up with the rather splendidly named Triple Cross Encroaching.

I sampled this in some variegated shashiko thread, at the original size and smaller. The shashiko thread was too thick for the smaller version, which incidentally is relatively narrower than the original size because although the foundation cross stitch can be reduced from over-four to over-two, the slanted stitches only stick out beyond the cross by one canvas thread in the original, which can’t be reduced any further. Still, they both make interesting patterns. I then sampled them in one ply of Caron Watercolours (original size) and one thread of Caron Wildflowers (reduced version), with lighter stitches worked in to see whether that could be used to create highlights. These light stitches will need to be placed a bit more randomly and I can also play with working the stitch upside down, but it looks promising; and the idea of doing the whole green chaos in variations of one stitch definitely appeals!

And that’s where I am at the moment. My next class is at the end of September, but with several busy weekends coming up I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to do. Kathryn went through various of my samples for large leaves with me and we decided on the ones that would likely work best, so I will at least try to get the big leaves in the foreground stitched. And I might sneak in a bit of mill, just for a change…

Looking back on my Canvaswork posts I realise I never updated you on my last class on 29th April. By 28th April nothing much had happened since the February class, but as I really couldn’t attend with nothing done at all I decided on some sampling. Helen McC had asked me to sample another background texture for the leafy jumble between the tulips, as she felt it needed three sizes rather than the two I’d done so far. She liked the staggered crosses, so I tried those using two plies of Caron Watercolours for the large crosses and one strand each of dark green and dark blue DMC for the small ones (the photograph shows only some of the small crosses done). By mistake I reversed the large crosses in the top row and found that I actually like the effect of that better with the other background (upright crosses) next to it, so that was a lucky error!

I also sampled the smallest of the three textures, lazy kalem, using one ply of Caron Watercolours only (orange arrow), then adding a strand of very dark green DMC (green arrow), then adding a strand of very dark blue to that (blue arrow). I couldn’t see any difference that wasn’t accounted for by the Caron variegation. Nor could Helen J who taught the April class. So one ply of Watercolour it is.

In class I played around with the medium-sized tulips behind the two very big ones, sampling split gobelin in Madeira silk which I liked apart from the colours (not enough blending) and a vertical herringbone variation in vintage silk originally intended for the pointy-petalled tulip which turned out not to work for any of them. A shame, because I did like the texture of the stitch. Perhaps I can use it somewhere else.

My homework for the next class, on 24th June, was to be the second hut and bush, the middle medium tulip and some more sampling for the pointy-petalled one. I managed one roof. Then the class was cancelled because too few people had signed up, and I cancelled one in early July because of a walk in memory of a church friend who had died suddenly and far too young. I was offered a replacement class for the one cancelled by the RSN on 22nd July, and decided to do some homework in preparation for that.

Looking at the roof I’d stitched, I didn’t like it. It’s a slanted buttonhole stitch with the ridge on the top, and the ridge was slightly irregular. I unpicked and restitched it. It was still slightly irregular, so I think I’ll just have to live with that! I also worked the rest of the hut, in horizontal satin stitches to depict the wooden planks, in two shades to show the shadow on the wood, and added two white lines to the roof because they are there in the photograph although I have no idea what they are. Finally the second bush, like the first one in Turkey rug stitch in a number of blends using crewel wool, vintage silk, flat silk and an anonymous matt twisted thread. I do dislike the fact that I’m not allowed to cut them until right at the end, because I can foresee that they will get horribly in the way! Still, it was progress. And then the RSN cancelled the 22nd July class as the tutors wouldn’t be able to get to Rugby because of the planned railway strikes. Oh well, at least it had spurred me on to do some work.

The cancellation meant that my next class won’t be until 19th August, a little under four months after the last one. Really, I should be able to show the tutor more than one hut and one bush! As we had extensively discussed the medium-sized tulips and some of the greenery, I decided to have a go at that. First the middle one of the three tulips; using Madeira silk as in the sampling, but more blended. In split gobelin, except where I wanted to indicate the line between petals, where the stitches would abut each other. I was quite pleased with how that turned out, apart from a little too much of the lightest shade (blue arrow). Still, I didn’t dislike it enough to unpick it .

On to the left-hand tulip. I’d got some lovely Au Ver à Soie flat silk (Soie Ovale) for this tulip, but on reflection the shade was too peachy, so I went with some Eterna flat silk combined with one dark red Silk Mill silk. It uses the same split gobelin approach with abutting stitches for the petal line, and because I wanted that line to be quite clear, I found I had to work a tiny extra stitch before fastening off the lightest blend so the final stitch pulled in the right direction. The things you have to think of when doing canvaswork!

And then the tulip was finished. And I liked the colour and the blending. But. There were coverage issues, and more importantly, the shape was wrong. Somehow the tulip had got rather bloated, and compared to its intended outline it was too wide.

The next day I bit the bullet and decided that it would have to come out. I printed the comparison photograph and marked it up to show which stitches needed to go. I also outlined the areas for the different blends, chucked the Silk Mill silk which has a slightly different texture from the Eternas, put new blends together and did as much prep as I could possibly do. Then some careful snipping and tweezering and the tulip was a fluffy pile of thread bits.

With twelve instead of ten strands in my needle (or rather, needles), I set to work; Eterna silk has been discontinued but fortunately I had enough left for this revamp! In marking up the tulip I’d also done some remedial work on the petal line, and fortunately I did much prefer the look of the restitched version (on the left in the comparison picture below). On consideration I should perhaps have kept that darker Silk Mill shade, but on the whole it is definitely an improvement, and much more like the intended outline. Phew! There are still some gaps, but I’m afraid they’ll just have to stay – more than twelve strands simply gets too bulky, and a major cause of the gaps is the fact that the stitches are split, which I can’t do anything about.

And finally, back to the middle tulip. Or rather, what I noticed when I started stitching it. The right-hand petal of my pride and joy, the big red tulip, was not as pointy as it should be!

It was very, very fiddly fitting in one short diagonal stitch in Caron Watercolours, and even more fiddly getting the couching stitches over it. By doubling a single ply of Watercolours I could start with a loop start, which was one less end to secure at the back – a good thing as the stitching is so densely packed there that it is difficult to get a needle through to fasten off. For the two couching stitches I really needed two blends, because one had to be redder than the other, but I got around that by manipulating the four strands in the blend so that the darker strands were more prominent at the very tip (blue arrow), and the lighter ones at the stitch further in (green arrow). Was this tweak really necessary? Probably not; I doubt if anyone else would notice if I hadn’t added the extra stitch. But it was worth it for me, which is what counts in cases like these. If it doesn’t bother you, leave it. If it will irk you whenever you look at it, take it out and re-do it. You’ll be much happier for it .

And that’s where it stands at the moment! Leafy stuff is my task for next weekend – after all the reds and pinks it’s going to be green, green, green. But all in silks and cottons, and not a trowel or pair of seccateurs in sight; very much my sort of gardening!