Silk work

To carry on with my post earlier today, given that I have lots of time to enjoy my embroidery without the usual constraints of the usual rhythm of a day at home, I have also started a more difficult silk piece. The design is inspired by an early 18th watercolour sample by Anna Maria Garthwaite as a suggestion for a custom order at the silk weaving mills of the Soieries de Lyon. The flower forms of the original painting are exquisite and a great challenge to try to transform the painted stylized forms into surface embroidery on fine linen.

I am working on optic white Belgian linen with Piper's 90 denier silk floss. As you can see from the second photo, the thread is not much thicker than a hair and I like to work with just one thread.

I have chosen a palette of vegetable dye colours, ambers, moss greens, and some indigo blues. I'll add a photo of the colour selection tomorrow.

This project is a pleasing change from the cross stitch I am doing simultaneously. One gives respite from the other.

And I even have a third project underway which I keep in my travel bag which comes on the plane with me.. maybe tomorrow I'll post that project and why I have no excuse to keep my fingers busy wherever I happen to be.



I love to keep busy and particular like to have a way to measure the passage of time. Embroidery provides this measure in a very tangible way and this blog helps also. Thanks for reading, loyal followers.