Journey: Day 6

So last time you saw the embroidery it had just received sky and there was still a lot of surface to cover. I had a few days where I didn't work on this as I like to try and stitch up the Friday freebie when I can and I also want to keep up with the Vakje per Week that is released Friday night.
I was also struggling a bit as to how to continue - I knew I wanted to include the amazing flower that I saw Shagufta Fyms make in this video, but I wasn't sure how to do it - or where. In the end I grabbed a brown variegated thread by Jodyri Designs - a tie-dye effect one called Bare Branches (018T) and got going in the bottom left corner.

To say that this flower is a thread eater is an understatement! As the thread is not colourfast I'd left about 1/3 of the skein overnight in a vinegar and water mix - and then ironed it to set the colour a bit better. I used over half of that just to make the lazy daisy stitches that form the framework of the flower - I used 3 threads at a time to help give the wrapped sections a bit of body. I then started wrapping... and wrapping... and wrapping... it seemed a bit endless. I was also worried I'd run out of thread and didn't want to have to leave the finishing of this till the next day so I decided to break open the skein of DMC floche I have (which is very difficult to get over here in Europe as it's not officially sold here) that is a nice dull greenish brown - 642 - and I think it worked really nicely.

Having added 4 rows of that I went back to the variegated thread for a bit and was still feeling that this was a never ending thing. I decided to use the floche to couch the lazy daisy threads down - and having done it once I did it 2 more times to create a bit of a lattice work. I then went back to doing the wrapping again. When I ran out of the treated thread I decided to use some similar DMC so I could finish it the same day. I chose a colour that's slightly different from the Jodyri thread but close enough that it looked like it belonged and came out at 3861. The bottom was a curved edge and looked a bit empty so I filled it in with the floche creating a bit of a textured area a bit like the base of a thistle thread.

As it was still early evening when I finished the shell-like flower thing I decided to keep plugging away. I'd decided to see what some cast on stitches would look like at the base of the mountain and I'm glad I did as they created a far off forest look. I did have to vary the depth of the stitches as at first when it was all even it did look a bit like a mousse on a bed of lettuce, which is definitely not the look I was going for! I used the floche, DMC L3012 (the L stands for linen in case you forgot), and Sajou's Retours Du Nord colour 2705 that I had been wanting to try out for a while.

Having done some "trees" I decided I'd better get the road I wanted in before I covered up the area I wanted to have the road on - roadworks are messy at the best of times, as you no doubt know, but are even worse when you have to rip out embroidery to make place for them. I started the road using split stitch and 2 strands of DMC L822. As it was way past bedtime at this point I stopped for the night.

I hope you enjoyed this instalment of my journey project! See you again tomorrow with more!