A bit of Bargello

Having watched Rachel's experiments with bargello and her fishes I was reminded that I wanted to try out this technique again myself, a little something to take me into the New Year. I did use a small area of this stitch on a needlecase I made for Aunt Cecil many years ago, which has found its way back to me now. The image on the front came from Candace Bahouth's Medieval Needlepoint, I'm not sure where the pattern on the back came from but the colours were chosen to compliment the front. The technique is named for the Bargello Palace in Florence where some chairs were worked in this stitch. You'll also find it called Flame Stitch and Florentine Stitch amongst other names.

I learnt a lot from watching the way Rachel handled her threads while stitching those fishies - the stroking and placing that ensured that the thread on the surface was smooth and lay flat. So I found my copy of Dorothy Kaestner's Four Way Bargello and chose a reasonably simple design to experiment with. It is nearly there, though filling the background is taking a while. I have used six strands (canvas is about 16 to the inch) and perhaps eight would have covered the surface slightly better. The eagle eyed among you might notice my mistake with one of the flowers, but I think that will be OK. I am enjoying grading the background colour, which darkens as it moves outwards. I wanted those flowers to sing against a dark blue but would have lost the leaves if I used that at the centre.

One of the things new embroiderers don't realise is the importance of separating out the threads of stranded floss and recombining so that they are flat rather than twisted together when you stitch. This makes such a difference to the appearance, especially with stitches where the threads lie parallel to one another. It took me many years to understand this, but once you do it becomes an important part of stitching technique. The smooth surface of the threads increases the amount of reflected light, which makes the final embroidery both more interesting and more beautiful. You can see here how the light bounces off the stitched surface, increasing the variety of tone in the embroidery depending on the angle of stitching.

I miscalculated the size of this, not being careful enough with checking the thread count. I will have to remove it from the frame to complete the edges - but the canvas should hold its stiffness. We'll have to see whether my stitching maintains its evenness once I am holding it and using one hand to stitch rather than passing the needle through from one hand to the other, above and below. Fingers crossed (though not when stitching of course).

How are your New Year's projects going?