Sunday, 8 June 2008

Cloak progress

Greetings unto the list. I do not believe I have posted here before, so here's a short introduction (although many of you know me). I am Baroness Siubhan inghean Fhearghuis. I reside in the shire of Flintheath where my fibre interests include tablet and rigid heddle weaving, and more recently embroidery. I do tend to dabble in other things like spinning, dyeing and kumihimo but there is just not enough time in a day to do all that I'd like.

One of my current projects is to add embroidery to a cloak for my husband.
Here is where it currently stands. I had projected the design onto the cloak with Jahanarabanu's assistance. The chalk I traced the design with wasn't going to last long on the wool, so I did a quick running stitch in cheap sewing thread to make the design more permanent. You can see that in the picture as the red stitching. The yellow outlining is done in 2/12 silk using a chain stitch. The original plan was to fill the design with red 2/12 silk but we are back to debating whether or not to fill the design.




Here is Lutr wearing the cloak to show where the design crosses to the front of the cloak for the two serpent/dragon heads. I plan to do the eyes in blue silk to make them stand out a bit.
The heads look a bit crooked here, but that is just because the cloak was put on slightly crooked.

Overall I'm very happy with how it is turning out. I don't think I'd use this silk again for this size or kind of project. I wanted to use silk to get that nice sheen that silk has, but just from carrying this around and him wearing it a few times, the silk has gotten quite fuzzy. It will look fine when finished, but won't have the look I was going for.

1 comment:

Jahanarabanu said...

Yeah!
This looks so great! I think you will be very pleased with the overall effect when the outline is complete. I haven't seen it up close recently, but I'm not sure that the fluffyness will show too much. Hopefully it will still be shiny for some time!

Vivat Siubhan!