New project!

Having finished my dress sampler, I fancied something a bit bigger to get my teeth into, so here he is! A stylised bird of some description that I am going to interpret in creative goldwork. I'll still be doing the samplers on and off in my hoop as well, but my hoop has his wing in it at the moment so the sampler will have to wait a bit!

My 'Dragon Bird' design

I've appliqued his breast on and here is the padding for the wing, three layers of felt stab stitched

in place.

and here's his wing, gold silk organza over the green silk and then I will couch different threads for his

feathers.

 Think I'll need to order some gold threads - yum,yum!

Mrs Delaney's Courtdress sampler complete.

Well, I got there in the end and I must say I'm quite pleased with the result. I learnt a lot, - you can make a tight turn with silk shading, and you can do small shapes and to replicate botany you need to be a botanist, which I'm not! I used three shades of green DMC, pale grey and pale blue, pink and lavender, four shades of red and a brown for the shading. I could have used twice as many, but I had deliberately restricted my palette.

The finished poppy

Small spray of pale blue flowers

It is my take on a historic piece of embroidery, not a replica. I only had a photo to follow and have never studied the dress and I did it for me to practice embroidery that might be used on clothing. I'm glad I persevered, that's something I've got better at, so onto the next sampler.

Spray of sweet peas

This will go into my little book of samplers that I'm making for C&G. Now I'm off to Pinterest to see what takes my fancy.......

Steady as she goes

I will get there, I will. Feels like that sometimes.........!

Working the centre of the poppy

Nearly done...