Silk Ribbon Embroidery Sachet | ||||||||||||
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A couple designs were chosen. In September I finished the first design. It's a sachet by The Thread Gatherer that was featured in the October/November 1999 edition of The Needleworker magazine (page 33). This was a fun little item to stitch. It has a linen front and a calico back. The front is stitched with hand-dyed silk fibers and matching silk ribbons (The Thread Gatherer, Sherbet). It utilizes a number of silk ribbon embroidery techniques using 4mm silk ribbon (spider web rose, French knots and couching) along with novelty buttons, and petit seed beads. The silk (Silk 'N Colors) was used to stitch the 4-sided stitch border and some bullion roses, as well as sewing down the buttons. 7mm silk ribbon ws used to make tje loopy fringe around the perimeter of the sachet. This was completed on our retreat. This is the first time I've ever done a bullion stitch, and I thought it was pretty fun. I hear some people really hate them. I printed off the directions from Sharon's Stitch Dictionary. I practiced a little on some scrap fabric to get the hang of it, then just went for it on the real item. The placement of my stitches isn't exactly like the pattern, but I think that's the beauty of surface embroidery techniques — you don't have to follow the charts perfectly and yet you can achieve a perfectly beautiful result. All the buttons were from my stash. The purpley-blue button is actually sort of melted! But it was stretched out of shape in such a neat asymmetrical way that I decided to use it anyway. The pretty big flower button used to be my grandmother's. Actually, when I did the finishing work on this piece, I decided not to put any "smelly stuff" in the sachet, so it's now more of a pincushion. The edging is a "fake" ruching technique. I say "fake" because the teacher says it's not true ruching ... a French word meaning "gathering, ruffling or pleating." This is really more of a couching technique with the gathered 7mm overdyed silk ribbon. I had to do this edging twice. The first time I stitched the edging on, I made my loops too big (I hadn't seen the model and, well, let's just say I needed a better idea of what 1/4" loop looks like — ugh!). So I took the edging apart and put it back together with the smaller loops. The result is really pretty. In class, all the sachets looked so different depending on what we decided to stitch. Most did the four-sided stitch, but then many "winged it" from there. There was a wonderful array of fibers, buttons, baubles, trinkets, charms and stitches used. Half the fun of that class was going around the room and seeing how everyone else had decided to stitch their sachets. I'm still most proud of learning the bullion stitch (rose) on this piece. It was not nearly has awful as I had been led to believe.
Originally published in the October/November 1999 edition of The NeedleWorker magazine (page 33)
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