Blue Phoenix Or nué
So, I took up a new embroidery project, an Or nué blue phoenix, which will become a small badge attached to a future carry bag for SCA use. The main reason I am working on it now is because of our Baronial A&S competition, which had at its main component something metal. Gold, even faux gold, was approved as a metal. I chose the phoenix as I'm a member of the Order of the Phoenix. Blue & gold are my chosen colors (along with silver), so the colors in the inspiration piece were perfect for me. The baronial colors are also blue and gold, but the phoenix is all gold. This just makes it more me.
So, my blue phoenix is slowly being worked on. I'm about halfway through the embroidery piece. I decided to upload the photos into a progress photo album, which you can see by clicking on the photo above right, or click here.
As to the embroidery process, I'm currently just going on the info I was taught in a few different classes. While I've looked at several Or nue extant pieces as photos in classes or online, I've not been able to see exactly how those were created, or how close or far apart the originals placed the threads. The books and articles I've read seem to have two different methods of doing up Or nue, one is evenly spaced threads, the other changes up the threads. I'm not sure which is the historical method and need to read more on it.
This piece is more based on how I want to place the threads, closer together to block out the gold in some areas, and spread farther apart to show the gold in other places like on the bird torso and wings so far. A lot of the area does allow bits of gold to peak through, so that it will glitter in the light at an angle.
The filled in design would have been better if done with a thinner gold thread. I'm unable to get a decent bird face, especially the mouth/beak area. It looks ok at a distance. But the design in general is looking pretty good so far. I'm enjoying the process of choosing where to place each thread, sometimes taking out a thread and replacing other colors there instead. It just has to be done at the time, and not later when I've added in another row of gold. More of a learning piece, I think. I do want to find out if the historical pieces used just silk in split stitch along high detail areas, like faces, but how the gold is dealt with, I've no idea.
Well, back to stitching as I've only a week left to finish it.
(x-posted from my new blog location, http://www.kimiko1.com/blog/?p=54. Still a work in progress there.