Pipers Silk (flat floss) order

I have never seen this maker's threads up close or in person before and after watching Helen M Stevens' embroidery tutorials on youtube, I decided I must have some!

They sell different types of both twisted and flat, but this order is of the flat, filament floss.

They arrived today.  The first three photos are taken out in the afternoon sunshine, just so you can see their marvellous brilliance.

They are still in their ziplock bag packaging, so you would think the plastic would make them shine more, but as you can see clearly in the third photo - the plastic probably takes away from it.

The photo below is taken inside with no particular light source.  Still in their bag, they are still stunning.

It is very fine thread, but being flat silk it should have better coverage than, say, cotton of a similar thickness.  This one (below) is called Saffron Gold.  It was in a little bag of its own - so is not in the images above.

You can see from the cm increments on the ruler that this thread is about half a mm wide.

Here it is out of its bag in early afternoon sun.

Kiss Lock Clutch - say that fast three times

 This could be addictive...

This is another 'first' for me.  It was a quick project in the general scheme of things.  From start to finish including the bead embroidery it would have taken less than a day.  I will make another one (and have the clutch frame on order) and it will be much quicker.  There will be less unpicking and re-sewing/embroidering on the second one.

First of all I had to sketch what I was doing.  If I don't have a clear plan in my head before I start, the project keeps evolving as it goes, and that rarely fares well...

Yes, it is different to the finished product, but it is basically where I was headed.

 Next I made a pattern.  I thought that allowing extra material at the dart points would enable me to embroider the beads around the bottom of the bag and still have a bit of fabric to create a 'tuck' in the base of the bag without losing beads in the tuck.

So, when I sewed the front and back together, I then pulled the front and the back of the bag away from each other and sewed across the pointy bits on the bottom to create a flat base.  It wasn't a huge success, but with a bit of playing around, it could be worthwhile.

The photo below shows the result of the 'tuck'.

It looks very crooked in the photo - it's not that bad in reality.

 

I attached the fabric to a backing fabric to make it large enough for the frame to hold it securely, and started decorating. 

excuse the feet...

 

 

 They are size 10 beads and the thread is lightly twisted silk which I bought on ebay.  Lovely and soft but if you have ratty nails or dry skin it catches on you all the time.  I recommend you look after your hands for a couple of days before you use silk.

The bag fabric is shot green satin.  $2 in the bargain bin at the local fabric shop.  The red beads remind me of the kind of cherries you use in cherry jam.  My old neighbour used to have a huge sour cherry tree which dominated the middle of his back yard.  He would give mum an ice-cream container full of them.

 Some silk ribbon embroidery.  Haven't done that in a lot of years.

Beads around the beads. These are size 10 with foil linings which doesn't show up on the

photo but they sparkle under the ceiling downlights at night.

I couched over twisted 4mm silk ribbon to form the stems.  The thread used for couching and to attach the frame to the fabric is waxed cotton from the bead shop.   I only used this because it was a nice colour match with the fabric.  I could have used normal sewing thread just as well.  The glass flowers a beautiful.

The lining is another $2 bargain.

 Now I just need somewhere fancy to go...