got carried away – tast goldfish

For last week’s tast challenge, I started an underwater piece with lots of seaweeds. Well, in my favourite online game my character is the proud owner of a goldfish now, so I thought this lake could use a goldfish. Of course, I decided to make it of shiny organza, so it took me a while. I couldn’t start practising shisha stitch because I found shisha mirrors only today, in a dingy local craft shop, after a whole day of browsing the shops of a nearby big city. Sigh.

So here is my progress with the fish. Sorry, it’s a bit image heavy.

Firstly, my self-drawn pattern. go here for a bigger version of it and click the donload link on the left hand side there if you want to use it for something. Yes, I know, standard goldfish don’t grin like that.

Next, I sew the organza on the piece of paper I drew the fish on. It was embroidered without ever piercing the backing paper. That is my usual method of using organza, since I haven’t yet found a method to mark organza, and can’t buy solvy or something like that locally. It has the disadvantage that you have no access to the backside. The organza is not patterned, I don’t know why there are moire effects in some pics and in others not.

The next picture shows the fish when I was done stitching. Terribly messy with all the loose ends on the frontside. As you already see, I decided to leave the eye undone and add it in paint later. It seemed too small to embroider. The thread is two strands of orange and deep orange embroidery floss from Anchor, and black one strand of the same. The stitches are shadow work (which is herringbone stitch done from the wrong side), satin stitch and running stitch. The running stitches look almost like back stitches because the organza is so transparent.

Now I’m almost done stitching, and have taken the fish off the paper.

the next picture shows the fish after hiding the loose ends and adding a few finishing toughes. The plan is to back it with a white fabric using bondaweb, and then sticking it on the rest of the embroidery, also using bondaweb. I decided to sleep over it before deciding if it’s done or needs some more, so that’s all I did until now.

And last but not least, a magnified detail from the fish that shows all the stitches used.

Sorry for so much ado about my little work. Do you find such postings useful or interesting? Or should I rather not bore you with tons of progress pictures? Or do you have questions about that piece? (Am I a sucker for comments? 😉 )

Tenar