I needed a present for a friend of mine. I found the inspiration at marvellous site Kat's Hats.
First I prepared a rectangle of the legth of 60*15cm and embellished it with beautiful golden lace. I bought a man-made gem that should be in the center. I'd wanted a gem in metal hem, but i didn't find any. I hesitated whether to enclose the gem with lace or embroidery, the second won and I was learning from the web how to do it on a piece of fabric.
Now to the rest. I prepared two rectangles (right sides together) of the length twice bigger than the small rectangle's one. I drew the pattern I thought up and pinned securely.
I didn't sew from one end to the other, I left a hole to be able to sew each piece to the circle later. You can notice that I'm still not good at sewing curved lines. What's more the velvet was moving while being sewn. I probably completed the two pieces wrong, or maybe velvet is just tricky:-P
Then I sewed each colour's edges together, pinned it like this and finished the curves.
Pah on the detail is visible how terrible my lines are :-D I cut the fabric near the stitches, at the "valleys" I tried to leave little fabric or cut the edge several times sheer to the stitches. At the "hills" I'd wanted to cut V-hapes, but I didn't have time so they look more like U-shapes.
Turned over and the wreath part sewn to a circle.
I started to gather the fabric to sew the big something into the small something. I used my favourite method of halving. I pinned the fabric of both at one place, then I foung out where the half of both the small and the big piece is situated. I pinned these two places together. I continued halving until they were all nicely pinned.
And then I found out I had completely forgot about the tail thing I wanted. It's the part that hang from one side of the wreath and whose end is placed on the opposite shoulder. I made it smaller so that it just hanged.. The same technique as at the Big piece. My skillfullness almost the same :-P
Pinned together even with the sewn and turned over tail. I sewed about a cm from the edge of the wreath.
Now to the gem. I learned how to do sisha embroidery, called mirror-work as well, from one person on the Net that was so kind as to share her knowledge with us.
I had to rip out the draft of emboidery I had made, because I didn't have any more golden thread :-[ I hoped that the result would look like a metal decoration that I didn't have.
I made one # sign and the other 45° slewed.
If you start, imagine the thread just goes out from fabric.
The next step is a something like a buttonhole stitch. You go under the web with your needle.
At this part I adaptated the stitch a bit. I'd call it a buttonhole-chain sisha as the next step resembles the chain stitch. Go back to the place your thread goes from and into the fabric.
Then prick a little to the left, needle inside the loop.
I prefered to fasten the chain loop before proceeding further, I don't like loose embroidery and fastened all together the broidery would look more like a metal chaos than the mirror work:-D
Like this your stitch should look.
The least one is done intuitively. Instead of making a loop going under the very first stitch and back to the place the thread goes from to close the last chain. I love doing sisha embroidery :)
Back to the rest. I roled the wreath rectangle so that the edge was hidden iside. I pinned it and sewn from the deep blue side, just at the limit between the wreath and the rest, stitches are visible only inside the wreath.
I modified the result to look better - hidden backstitch was used to move the wreath up.
Ironing.. (Time-taking but heart-warming after all of the work done, as it gives the chaperon a lot nicer look.)
This is my kind model showing the chaperon.
The producing took several hours more than one day.
I'll give it to my friend on Saturday. Will he like it? :-)