Poppy and Acorns - Petal Bag

 This is the Poppy panel of the petal purse. I thought that I would do a six petal poppy to go with the acorns. A number of embroidered poppies have only four petals, but others do have six. The acorn caps are detached buttonhole and the nuts are a couched gimp.

The fabric that I used for the background is a Dupon silk in off white.  I ran the warp from side to side so that the more distinct weft with the slubs runs up and down. I mounted the silk with a white cotton backing in stretcher bars to keep both layers of fabric taut while stitching.

To transfer the design to the fabric, I placed a tracing of the design on tissue paper on the silk and then thread basted through all of the layers with a pale gold silk thread. Later I carefully tore off the paper so that the design on the silk was there but not too bold. It was easy to cover or tear out as necessary.

When the design was on the silk, I could finally start the embroidery. I mainly used satin stitch or soft shading with added stems of outline stitch. During this step I also added the flat elements of the design like the couched gold tendril and the snail. The snail is silk covered bullion wire that it couched in a spiral.

It was fun to be able to start the color embroidery after all of the work getting to this point.