Illuminated Floral Stumpwork Panel – 4

As I’m getting more into the stitching of this stumpwork panel, I am able to use more of the colours, which is always good! I’m not one for designs with limited colour palettes, and red is my favourite colour, so I’m a happier bunny now that the design is ‘livening up’ with some detail  🙂

I’ve now stitched the trellis in gold over the sepals and buds of the pinks (using just one strand of Madeira #3). The emerging petals from the buds are tiny detached chain stitches, and the ‘base petals’ of the pinks are worked in long and short stitch filling. The detached petals will be fixed half covering these detached parts, to give a 3D look to the whole flower.

Next, I moved on to stitching the strawberries in the bottom right hand corner of the panel. These were made as the buds were – using two layers of felt first for padding, then covering with the red silk. Stitching straight on to the black fabric, rather than through the gold painted fabric, was a real relief  – much nicer to stitch on.

I did feel that the ‘seeds’ on the strawberries turned out a bit too minimalist for me – they were worked in one strand of Madeira #3, and I think they sunk into the red stitches a bit too much, so that they  hardly show now. I might go over them again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~