Silk Shading

When we moved to this house 18 months ago, I was delighted to find that we were only 20 minutes away from Hampton Court and the world famous Royal School of Needlework. I was even more excited to learn that they offered beginners day classes which were open to everyone. Last year I attended a course on Crewel Embroidery and this Saturday I completed the beginners Silk Shading Class. This technique has always fascinated me and I have tried many times over the years to get to grips with it, without success. It is also know as Needle/Thread painting or long & short stitch. I have bought books and kits on the subject ...

And although I understood the theory (or I thought I did!) my stitched results looked messy and nothing like the pictures! Within ten minutes of the class starting on Saturday I knew I was in good hands, we had two wonderful teachers who explained exactly what we had to do and were so patient :) The class kit, came with pre-traced silk and plenty of threads (these are my left overs)...

I quickly learned to think of it not as long & short stitch to be worked in rows, but more as a colouring in or painting technique, like a staggered satin stitch. In order to get good smooth blending, you need to come up into the previous row of stitches splitting some of them, and not down into them as I had been doing. We started stitching straight away, you can see the first petal I stitched in the middle where I still have blocks of colours and harsh edges...

The second side went a little better, outlining the piece in split stitch first really helps get a smooth edge...

I took some time to get used to the random nature of the stitches, everything else I do requires even stitches the same length and neat rows, it was very liberating to stitch this way :) ...

I finished my piece at home with a centre of French knots...

You can see from this photo of the class sample that I still have a lot to learn...

I had a wonderful day at the RSN and have signed up for the two day follow on course in August. I found the day quite tiring, as I had to really concentrate! When I mentioned how exhausting it was to my husband and son, I thought they were going to wet themselves laughing! They found the whole idea of a day of embroidery being tiring completely hysterical!!! They couldn't believe I had spent 6 hours on four petals and a stem, but I know you all understand :))
I am confident to try my kit now and some practice pieces in my instruction book, I really want to practice what I have learnt before August. Of course what I really want to do, is to become proficient enough to attempt a stitched picture of Jasper...