A New Mini Clover

I've been working on a number of these so more to come shortly!  My goal is to have at least 20 of them if not more.  They all fit into 2"x3" Victorian metal frames.  They are all pretty similar (and in some cases the exact same) size as actual clover that I've picked and dried from my yard. 

I'm experimenting with different techniques and materials.  I want the group of them to work from very traditional stitching to non-traditional collage-stitching.

Here is the latest finished one:

 Details:  Valdani 6-strand cotton flosses on 18 count cotton Aida cloth.  Cross-stitch leaves with a stretched gilt pearl purl outline and stem.  Blossom is composed of bullion knots in natural silk floss and Gilt Sylke Twist.

Two Mini Clovers

Here are a few small experimental pieces I finished recently.  I am using the motif of a small single clover and mixing goldwork and other embroidery techniques.  I'm hoping to do a little grouping of these clovers and am pretty excited the intuitive freedom that I'm giving myself to try different combinations of techniques in these.  

They are a small size, which provides its own trickiness.  I am just playing with combining different techniques.  All are on the 18 count Aida rustico.  I am purposely using this Aida rustico fabric for its contrast to the goldwork techniques (I feel like it's a "weedy" fabric).  All the metal threads are still castoffs--using my weeds to stitch weeds!  These will be mounted in the same kind of small metal Victorian frames as my White Clover. 

 Mini Clover 2:  Cross stitch with metal cutwork and stretched metal s-ing
I really loved mixing the cross stitch with the goldwork but it kind of feels a bit disjointed to me as is.  I think it's a good first trial run of the technique mixing but I have some other ideas I want to try to see if I can refine or challenge it a bit more.   I thought the solid metal cutwork would be an interesting combination with the cross stitch since I thought it would complement the graphic quality of the cross stitch well.  I am very bothered by the flatness of the cross stitch though so would like to experiment with padding it up next time or something to blend the height difference of the techniques more.  

 Mini Clover 3:  Silk shading with 1 strand but mixing cotton floss with silk floss (you can very subtly see the difference in shine), stretched cutwork, stem stitch and bullion knots using metal threads
Stitching the 1 strand of cotton next to the 1 strand of silk was actually really interesting.  They are slightly different widths and have a slightly different coverage feel to them too.  I ripped each leaf out numerous times because it seemed to get a bit ropey, overworked or dimpled on me.  Just need more practice I think.  The texture difference was really something I liked a lot though.   

I think the blossom is a bit boring. I used some leftover silver passing to do some bullion knots and they just didn't mix with the cut work like I wanted them to.  I try adding in some bullion knots using the Silke Gilt Twist and I think that helped but I'm just not terribly excited or annoyed by it.  Happy I tried it but want to try something a bit more adventurous I think :)!

White Clover

I love clover and I wanted to do a white clover after I finished my Red Clover piece.  This clover is tiny.  The frame opening is only about 3.5" tall!  

I used similar techniques as the Red Clover, mixing Valdani variegated embroidery flosses in long and short and bullion knots with stretched gilt purls.  The ground fabric is even weave linen.  I wanted to keep the techniques fairly simple on this piece since it was so small.  Mounting this piece was quite fiddly with it being such a small oval.  Overall I'm pretty happy with it.  The variegation did not fall quite as nicely on the leaves as on the Red Clover but I did not let myself plan which area of the variegation to use.  I did a couple of the leaves multiple (multiple) times so I guess I kind of cheated that way a little bit.  Also, I used a plain stem stitch on the stems on this piece instead of the stretched pearl purl on the Red Clover piece. 
On to the next weed!