My 'diamond waves' are coming along quite nicely and I'm feeling really relaxed while I stitch. If I want to get stressed I could worry that my junctions are not consistent. Sometimes I have a T-junction and sometimes there's a space. All in all I'm quite happy though and while I was stitching (is there such a word as "
sashikoing" I wonder )and my mind was wandering, I started to think about beads.
Susan has mentioned that we might add beads...
So here are some I am considering:
Not the best photo but it is good enough to see how a scattering of seaspray beading would look above the diamond waves. The crystals are sadly too large as I love the way they reflect the light. At the moment I'm thinking I'll either use the clear glass, silver lined beads (top right) or the square glass irridescent beads (bottom centre). What do you think?
I am also wondering whether I would like to stitch my dragonfly in a variegated thread. I'm using
DMC no.8 coton perle in white for the waves. I prefer this to the "proper" sashiko cotton from Olympus as I like the sheen it has and I also find it sews more smoothly. Maybe a variegated dragonfly would be over egging this lovely design...
The most important thing I have learned with today's sashikoing is to leave those little loops of extra thread when I change stitching direction, it is amazing how quickly they get taken up as I smooth my work out. Without those loops my waves would be all puckered up.
Varigated sounds nice. Watch out changing the thread colour doesn't make the dragonflies appear to recede on the panel. I find that the whitest sashiko stitching always stands out the most - most contrast.
ReplyDeleteThe Olympus 40 metre medium sashiko thread can be a bit fluffy - it isn't my favourite. The colour range is great though... Their 100 metre thread in medium is much smoother. When I'm in Japan, I look out for Yokota thread - medium and fine - very nice and smooth.
Concentrate on the junctions where the lines cross - like the main diamond lines - the ones where the stitching lines just meet are fine if you just leave a little gap at the T junction, so the stitches don't actually meet - like a gap between the upright and the horizontal lines in the T.
:-)
Thanks for all those tips Susan, I really appreciate and I'm sure it will also help the others following this tutorial. There are a lot of things to think about and I'm still not sure about stitching from the back.
ReplyDeleteooo i love japanese things too, especially their innovative sewing notions and fabulous cotton fabric! :-)
ReplyDeletehugz,
grace
The stitching from the back idea is rather unusual - I haven't seen traditional hand sewn sashiko done that way. Sometimes at quilt shows I get people asking me if sashiko should be stitched from the back or if it is reversible, so I wonder if they've got that idea from tutorials like the one you followed. As quite a lot of Western quilters find it difficult to make the sashiko stitch longer than the gap on the front of their work, perhaps the stitching from the back method has been devised to help solve that problem.
ReplyDeleteI guess the thing I wouldn't like about trying to stitch from the back is that you can see what's going on with the front while you're stitching! A bit like machie quilting from the back - I'm always bothered that I'll end up with a thread loop or something where I don't want it, so I don't do it much. Were you recommended to sew with a pleating action? That's the thing that really helps to get sashiko stitches nice and even.