Carolyn Pearce Home Sweet Home workbox 20: the thimble holder’s base

I am now up to stitching the base for the thimble holder from Carolyn Pearce’s book ‘Home Sweet Home: an embroidered workbox’.

The base has a circle of split back stitches done first, to define the shape. Then satin stitch is worked inside those lines. The thread is not taken ‘the long way’ across the back each time, but only a tiny stitch is made at the edge of the circle before the next long stitch is made across the circle, to cut down on bulk.

A second layer is done, outside the line of split back stitch and at right angles to the first layer this time. I used Gloriana  variegated silk for this, so I ended up with a softly shaded effect.

Then I made a trellis of light green threads across the shape, first horizontally and then vertically. Once that had been done, I repeated that with Kreinik Very Fine Gold Braid, keeping the gold thread very close to the green thread I had laid down first.

Then I couched down each intersection with deep lilac Anchor stranded cotton, using two strands.

This shows my oval embroidery hoop by Susan Bates (my favourite brand of hoop), with the pieces I have stitched so far for this project.

Finally, before I could assemble the thimble holder, I stitched this little motif on a piece of scrap silk, to use for the reverse side of the lid. This is only 3/4 of an inch diameter, in real life.

Now for the tricky part….putting it together!

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