Hi Guys, VBS -- I am finally making myself the jacket out of old silk kimono fabrics. Each front is made of 2 different fabrics (that's a total of
4), the back is five pieces (total of 9 fabrics,) each sleeve is 2 pieces (total of 13 pieces), the shawl collar is 2 pieces (total of 15 fabrics) the cuffs on the sleeves are the same fabric for a grand total of 16 different fabrics in this jacket. I'm still trying to decide if I want one or two patch pockets and which fabric(s) to use because it will be yet another different fabric. Because the fabrics are old and have been used, they have a few stains. Most of the stains were small or in areas that I could cut around when I cut out the jacket pieces. Unfortunately, one of the fabrics I have used on the right jacket front had some significant stains. Of course, they were in areas that were very obvious and I couldn't cut around them :-(. I decided to do some silk ribbon embroidery on the fabric to cover the stains. It was going OK until I started to add some lazy daisy designs done in a variegated silk floss with yellow ribbon french knot centers. The floss is called Lavender Honey (maybe a Thread Gatherer fiber but I don't know that for sure). It is a lovely variegated with yellows, greens & lavenders. The ribbon parts are purple wisteria clusters, variegated lilac wisteria clusters, variegated periwinkle "tulips" (don't know what else to call them) and variegated pink spider web roses, variegated pink rosebuds, green leaves and all sorts of ribbon french knots. I got about half the floss lazy daisy designs done and decided that the yellow to green variegation (which is a LOT of the area of the floss) isn't as nice as I first thought it would be. VBS -- I won't frog the stuff because the silk fabric base is delicate but I'm not very happy with it. I'm not sure if the area need some lilac floss french knots to brighten it up a bit or if it maybe needs a bit of metallic to give it some shimmer. There is a lot of metallic already on the base fabric so using some Kreinik would fit in OK. I'll stitch the rest of what I have planned for the area and then I will do a scan and post it. Maybe I'll be happy once I get it all finished. There is a LOT of embroidery in a small area because I had several large stains to cover -- fortunately, it's on the right front in the upper quadrant so it's an area where you would expect to find something like this. Anyway, I'll post when I have the scan posted -- if I still don't like the looks of the piece, someone here might have a suggestion that would help me! AHEMMM that would be a **needlework** suggestion -- I'm sure a lot of you have non needlework suggestions for what I could do -- LOLOL! CiaoMeow >^;;^<PAX, Tia Mary >^;;^< (RCTQ Queen of Kitties) Angels can't show their wings on earth but nothing was ever said about their whiskers! Visit my Photo albums at
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