Stumped

A few weeks ago, I attended a 3D Wired Embroidery workshop taught by Ella Richards, one of the ladies from Solent Textile Group.  Ella had brought along some gorgeous examples of her work, featuring leaves, insects and fuchsia flowers which were very inspirational.  I had never done any stumpwork before so it was a baptism of fire.

The idea was to make a 3D flower in the style of an evening primrose and we were set homework to complete beforehand.  I chose to make a pink and white variation and after tracing the petal and leaf outlines onto white cotton fabric, I painted the fabric using watered-down ink-pad reinkers.  The flower only has four petals but I added another to be my test petal.  The fabric was mounted into an embroidery hoop and made drum tight.

The next step was to couch wire around the edge of the petals.  Couching is the term for attaching a thick decorative thread or wire onto fabric using a series of tiny stitches, sewn perpendicular to the thicker material.

To cover the wire, the next stage involved making a buttonhole stitch (also called blanket stitch) all the way around the edge of the petal to completely cover the wire.

To make my life more difficult (anyone else like to run before they can walk??) I chose to follow the colour gradient of the petals and start with white, then combine white and pink and finally solid pink.

Once all the petals and leaf were embroidered, they were roughly cut from the backing fabric.  There followed the nerve-wracking bit which was to trim away the excess fabric as close as possible to the stitching without cutting any of the stitches!

For the flower centre, Ella first showed us how to make stamens using beads on twisted wire.  These were secured into a piece of felt that would be used for the flower backing.

To add more texture to the flower centre, turkey stitch was used to create large loops.

The loops were then snipped open, trimmed and fluffed up to create the full flower centre.

The petals were then attached to the felt by poking the wires from the petals through the felt, bending them back on themselves and oversewing on the back.

You can see the dimension of the flower in this photo.