Monumental Embroidery Finished.

Let me give you a brief accoun: four months of work, a lot of contemplation about the colour, first time embroidering silk on silk and the second embroidery in chain stitch. Almost four balls of thread 66 meters each. And a lot of hours spent on this project that this time can be counted. And I really like counting.

Let’s do it. Each ball is divided into 8 pieces. Each has 6 threads. I didn’t use the last piece in the last ball so that makes it 3*8*6 + 7*6. Which is 186 threads. Each thread takes about 25 minutes to stitch. It depends on the number of turns and your speed, of course. So the whole work should have taken 77 and a half hours.

I bought the silk a long time ago. At first I didn’t know what to do with it, then I forgot where I had put it and finally I decided to use it in this project. I wasn’t quite sure about working with something this smooth and solid colour. I even wanted to stain it with tea or coffee. Fortunatelly I didn’t. Having washed it before using (as I always do before any project) I saw that it became ‘cracked” – it was covered in a net of tiny creases. Which was perfect. 

And I started stitching. Which, as you already know, took a lot of time. All this time I was worrying that I couldn’t properly see what exactly I had embroidered and where I can see it, it’s difficult to make out what exactly it is. When stitching was finished even with the best of lighting it looked like this:

I understood that I have to stretch it somehow. But the embroider was one meter long. What should I use as the back? Then I realized that I have two A2 watercolour albums. Certainly one album was not enough. I had to attach them one to the other. And here is how I did it:

The back side

In this photo the albums are connected with rulers using super-glue and the cloth is already stretched on the other side. If you look closely you will see the threads. And in the first photo you can see the picture I got. Now it’s time to frame it. But that should come later.