Chikan Embroidery

I signed up to join in the SAL with Anita, who is teaching us a different style of embroidery.  Chikan embroidery often decorates clothing, and the stitches used create a shadow effect on the fabric.
 The first stitch we learned appears like a straight stitch on the fabric surface, but creates a herringbone design on the reverse. If the fabric is translucent or transparent, the design shows through to add dimension and interest.

I began with a piece of muslin, and stitched a small practice bit.

As I held the embroidery up to the window, I could see the herringbone design from behind.
Hmmm, I wondered if another fabric might show it better?

I have this piece of almost burgundy fabric. It's light and almost sheer.

You can see it has a pattern of its own, but I thought I would try it anyway and see what happened. Experiment a little.

I tried two strands of white embroidery floss, but I felt the colour difference was too much, and it looked chunky on the sheer fabric. I was hoping for a more subtle effect.



So I tried 1 strand of floss. The shadow shows through nicely, but it was too white against the dark fabric, for me.

 Next, I tried pink tatting thread size 80. The shadow shows through nicely, but I wasn't fond of how the pink looked.

Hard to please, aren't I? lol

Then I tried red sewing thread, two strands.

This was too subtle!


It's a little difficult to see.







Not wishing to give up too easily, (what do you mean, stubborn? lol) I tried the pink thread a second time.

I still didn't like the colour, even though it shows up a lot better than the red.

 But the shadow work didn't quite show up as well as the two floss strands......
sigh

Back to square 1!




I'm using a light variegated, hand-dyed embroidery floss, called Pink Grapefruit. As you can see, the colour variations are subtle.

 Holding the fabric up to the window, I see my stitches look more even.

Maybe all that practicing really wasn't a waste of time!

And, for now, I've satisfied my curiosity.




You can see the colour variations more easily with the light shining through the muslin.

Now, I'm almost finished lesson 1.
Which is a good thing, because lesson 2 has been posted!





Thanks Anita.

I'm off to do some more stitching!


Hope you're having fun doing something you enjoy.

Thanks for visiting.

Hugs from Suz