Optical Illusions in Brazilian Embroidery Leaves -- No Stems

This picture is from one of my Millefiori B.E. designs:

I posted it here to keep everyone interested and reading on to the "good part", hints and tips about stitching leaves and no stems. The design is #993 "Field of Flowers".  I originally designed it to use up all of my odd floss colors.

Fans of Brazilian dimensional embroidery were pretty much underwhelmed.

So I pulled out a piece of white fabric and all of the Iris #227 (Pale Sea Green) floss I could find in my stash, some pale green beads (because I'm almost never without a bead or two next to my embroidery), and stitched this busy, busy, flower-and-technique-filled design in monochromatic colors. See what happened:

I framed it as a small art quilt. I've also learned that it's a good idea to have your quilt fabric handy so that you can match fabric and floss colors. Here's a picture of the finished design, made into the little quilt:

I'm not really A True Quilter, but I know how to sew the fabric together (somewhat). These little quilts are a nice alternate framing idea for our Brazilian dimensional embroidery.

Well, now I'll talk about The Main Subject of this post ... optical illusion and Brazilian dimensional embroidery. 

Stems, leaves.  Lazy Daisy leaves and evergreen leaves. 

The idea is to decrease bulk and still have a graceful, elegant background for our dimensional flowers. When we receive a B.E. design on fabric, those blue lines will wash out. Often the entire stem and all leaves are drawn on the fabric. Of course, just because they are there, that doesn't mean we have to cover every line with floss!  Here's where the optical illusion comes in.

This is a finished branch covered with lazy daisy leaves. We often stem (or outline) stitch the branch first and then add the leaves, as shown below.

But we don't have to do that!  Look at the diagram below. No stem is stitched. I'll bet your eye was fooled!
    (It's called trompe l'oeil, literally meaning 'fool the eye', and is pronounced: TROM-loy.)  A note of caution -- it does NOT work when I step on my bathroom scale.  It's also easier to say "optical illusion".

Now, when I show you the diagram without the stem, you'll see what I mean. Your eye will tell you there is a stem; you will not have bulky embroidery, and it looks just fine. See?

Notice those lazy daisy stitches? They are slightly offset - one side just a bit longer than the other. This makes it easy to tuck all of those stiches along a stem line. Just be sure that the short end of the stitch is beneath the long side of the stitch (not shown here).  Here's a step-by-step diagram:

And here's a picture:

 

This "off-setting technique" also works with evergreen leaves, which are basically just straight stitches (although the idea of Glory bullions for each is rather interesting...). See:

(It will look a lot better when the flowers are added and the blue lines washed out, I promise...)

You can choose your own method of stitching -- the regular lazy daisy stitch (or detached chain, as named in stitch directories), the off-set lazy daisy stitch, and at the far right, the twisted lazy daisy stitch. Select the method you like best.

And if you are being more adventurous (I'm sure I've written about this before, but it's like repetition for emphasis to reinforce learning.), you can stitch your leaves with the Reverse Lazy Daisy Stitch. This stitch starts farther away from the center branch (which is stitched) and the tacking stitch becomes the leaf "stem".  See (bottom diagram):

Just always remember to be adventurous in your embroidery. Try new things, be creative, have fun! Here's another close-up photo from my "Field of Flowers" design:

And now I'm going to go back to stitching. I'll show you my new project soon. It's also quilt-related (sigh).....

Rosalie

Let's Make Mistletoe

You can add mistletoe to your holiday embroidery.  I like Cire #051 (Shaded Light Moss Green) or #053 (Shaded Light Avocado Green) for my mistletoe leaves. Some of my leaves are stitched with a "long-tailed lazy daisy stitch" -- one side is longer than the other, and saves adding a stem -- and other leaves are stitched with a regular lazy daisy stitch (also known as a detached chain stitch):

Oh!  Did you notice those "mistletoe berries"?  They are "pearls" -- the cheapie discount store brand with pearl coating.  I broke apart a really old necklace with graduated-size beads, peeled off the coating and stitched them in place, some small and some larger, with regular white sewing thread. The smallest "berry" on this embroidery is approximately 1/16".
       To make them realistic, I pulled out my black Sharpie and colored the thread where it comes out of the bead. I like to think it looks like the "berry bottom" of the mistletoe berry. To stitch your own mistletoe berries and leaves, just use your Marvy wash-out pen and draw a curved line on the fabric. Next, add the lazy daisy stitches beginning at the tip of the "stem" and alternating stitches on each side. Remember, you don't have to stitch a separate stem if you extend one side of the lazy daisy stitch (or even make a twisted lazy daisy). Here's another picture from one of my Millefiori B.E. designs called "Remembrance", which was designed by my friend Phyllis:

Other flowers were on the original but I did something you might like to try, too. Pull out any one of the B.E. prints from your stash and substitute flowers, leaves and colors to make your own holiday design. I also added other beads and buttons and whatever I wanted until my heart was content.


This little Millefiori design called "Winterlight" also has mistletoe tucked among the greenery. When I first designed it, I thought it would make a pretty Christmas greeting card or could be framed as a small tablescape with holiday decorations arranged alongside.

This is a detail photo of the same design stitched with different colors:

By the way, this design was stitched on white fabric, but I wanted to "glitter up" the background, so I thinned down some some sparkly acrylic paint from the craft store and brushed it on.  By the way, if you paint any backgrounds, be sure to thin the paint to a very watery consistency. Otherwise, paint will stiffen the fabric and it will be difficult to needle.

One of these times I will write about coloring backgrounds ....



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