I adore hand embroidery and I’ve wanted to share this little project with you for a while. This is Ziggy – one of the loves of my life – and he’s arghhh not quite finished. I just need to put one small grey line of stitch in to give him a definition around his chin and I’m procrastinating about it, so I’m sharing him with you anyway.
I’m working to improve my painting in stitch skills. I’ve been following the work of Chloe Giordiano in Instagram and bought her book. Her work is adorable. I’m developing my own technique which I feel is a little more laid back and free style. I use an adapted long and short stitch which is critical to the colour blending. Long and short stitch if applied in a technically correct way has rows of even stitches applied following a base line of long and short but eve these start in a uniform manner. My stitch length vary throughout and this really supports the colour blending in the fur. If I’m not happy then I over stitch with highlights or lowlights.
The key for me with this piece, was really getting the natural parting down Ziggy’s back correct. The direction of the stitches really do matter and I combined my long and short stitch variation with herringbone stitch.
I’m really happy with the results.
My clients ask if I use DMC or Anchor. Generally I don’t have a preference. I have a palette of a couple of hundred threads collected over the years and as long as the colour is right that’s fine, there’s little difference in the way the threads handle. And if I can’t find the right colour, I will blend a couple of strands to get the mix I want – just as you would with paint.
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