Always eager to learn more about embroidery, I was excited when I found Mastered.com and saw that there was a Goldwork Embroidery course taught by Hand & Lock. I thought it would be a good challenge and experience for me over the summer. I had signed-up for it back in the Spring, but with school and travel (and a little human running around), I just got to start it this past weekend.
We were given the lotus design, which is proving to be a good challenge for me in that it is symmetrical and keeping designs symmetrical is a whole lot harder than people think or give credit. With my interest in color interactions with metal threads, I also thought this would be a great opportunity to experiment with the colors I chose to use. I wanted to use just gold when it came to the metals, so I decided to use purple fabric. It is a double-faced silk satin that I had dyed back in grad school (it's not a really even dye job) that I have backed with plain weave cotton. I have also chosen to use a light, medium, and dark purple thread along with my 488 gold Gutermann. I have discovered that a dark aubergine purple in DMC cotton floss is not sold in any store around me, so the bottom dark purple is actually a Gutermann sewing thread too.
You can see my pencil marks for where I plan to change the shading. I thought I would keep it simpler with just banded shading but following the shape of the tip.
I absolutely love all your gold work, it is something I would also love to learn! I do counted cross stitch of paintings. Thank you for sharing your work.
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