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…