After four full days of designing, drawing, needle lacing, stitching, and stabbing my fingers many times with needles and wire, I have finished my work on this gorgeous block, I certainly hope Karrin likes the finished product, as I would certainly love to keep this one myself. I tried to keep with Mrs bloomers theme, and added a bird as Gerry kindly suggested, and a wisteria vine.
My first step was to design what I wanted to do, so pencil in hand, I jotted down in my art journal.
I then scanned the block and drew directly onto it so I would have a better idea of size.
Colours was next, this is what I chose.
Here is a photo of the finished block:
This is my work, the bird and the wisteria vein, I also added beads to the seam of fly stitch running down the centre. I originally had planned two birds, but I made my wings a little bigger than first drawn, and had them going the same direction, hence the two wings on our bird.
My bird has a needle lace body, with long and short detached wings with buttonhole edge, and woven tail feathers. He is made from a variegated stranded cotton.
The vein was a bit more complex. The wisteria flowers are cone shaped, these are slips that are made up of hundreds of colonial knots, also in a variegated floss. Here they are before I started, the two at the bottom are the wings.
The vein itself was wrapped with green wool, and then couched into place with the darker thread and with raised buttonhole wraps as the curling vein. The leaves are picot stitch in the same thread as the vein. this made the larger which was the effect I wanted. I also added some bullions and knots are each end for some added interest to the vein. Here is a close up of the wisteria flowers and the top of the vein.
I was really happy with how it turned out and envy Karrin for owning such a wonderful piece of work. Karrin I had a lot of fun doing this block and my small part of it, and can't wait for mine to come home.
TTFN
Arlene
