Progress on the Finnish Embroidery

Finnish Embroidery - Progress

Finnish Embroidery - Progress

I managed to get started on my Finnish embroidery project at last. It’s going to be a table runner for our dining room, which is golden-yellow and decorated in a slightly Arts and Crafts fashion, so the design has been traced twice, back to back, to create a long design, and without the lettering shown in the photograph that accompanied the linen (see my first post about this project).

Following the model I saw in the shop, I’m using Bokhara Couching for all the solid shapes, laying the couching stitches in a sort of brickwork pattern to create texture. The deep golden circles will echo the sunburst in the eucalyptus frieze in the dining room, and the two greyish greens are close to the other colours in the frieze.

All the lines are going to be in stem stitch. I’m working this quite slowly and carefully to keep the stem stitch twisting neatly in the same direction and the stitch length more or less the same.

It’s some time off yet, but I’m planning to hand-hemstitch the edge of the runner. I take a slightly unexpected pleasure from hand-hemstitching, and even the six metres of hemstitching on the Piano Shawl haven’t put me off. There’ll be about three metres of hemstitching on this, and I’m rather looking forward to it!

12 Comments

  1. Very interesting! I’ve got a Finnish piece to work somewhere, a counted method called Liina.

  2. Lady Fi says:

    Love the colours you’ve chosen!

  3. I really like this…I’m a bit of an arts & crafts era fan!

  4. Penny says:

    This is going to be a beautiful piece — I always admire your careful stitching. Love these oh so soft, but rich colors.

  5. I love the colours …. and the pattern.

  6. This will be lovely, Rachel.

  7. I love the colours and I know what you mean about the stem stitch. I find hem stitching almost meditative so understand why you would choose it.

  8. karen says:

    I absolutely love this!! I hope you have a wonderful Christmas!!

  9. coral-seas says:

    Yes, I too love the colours. I’ve never done hand hemstitching but I love the way it finishes things off.

  10. This is going to be lovely!!

  11. Janice says:

    Looking forward to seeing it progress. I love the Arts and Crafts period too, and these colours are beautiful.

  12. […] now using it on the Finnish Embroidery, stitched in pearl cotton – it creates a lovely “basketlike” texture. […]