Silk Ribbon Scene

I've had a piece of painted dupioni silk for awhile, a result of playing with fabric dyes and silk ribbon with my local SAGA Chapter, the Colonial Cablers. It's been in my silk ribbon box
for...dare I say....a few years. I've always wanted to stitch a scene out of it...lots of flowers, maybe a tree or a fence? A study in depth perhaps, showing plants in a distance.

So I sat down a week ago and began playing with a drawing.  It's not very detailed but it gives me a place to start.  Scanning my various silk ribbon books I looked for other stitches, or stitch combinations, to try instead of my usual...sort of push my limits. I apologize for the not-so-great photo but you get the idea.

The silk panel is lightly brushed with some blues at the top for sky, some greens below the middle, and then some raspberry along the bottom. I'm using the 'wrong side' of the silk, not the actual painted side. The color is fainter, better to
suggest a scene.



I added a "wall" with brown Liquitex Ink! (transparent burnt umber watered down with a little water) this past week, carefully smudged on with a foam rectangle (courtesy of Dollar Tree foam brushes) for each block then quickly dried with a hair dryer to stop the bleeding. After building the wall, I roughly outlined each block with a darker brown Micron pen.

But the panel only measures 7" wide by 8 1/2" tall....not much, and a problem for hooping. I cut a larger piece of Kona cotton and laid the silk on top. A machine zigzag and straight stitch secured both together, then I carefully cut away the cotton from the back up to the machine stitching. This allows me to hoop with a large hoop and not disturb or damage any embroidery. It also allows me to lace the finished piece to a piece of acid free mat board to prepare it for framing when it's completed.

And now the stitching fun begins.....