Samples 2015: Week 19, Carnation ‘Blackjack’

Dark red velvet, 6cm square, embroidered with narrow free zigzag stitch in a shaded pink rayon 30 thread. I always find velvet... uncooperative! To put it politely. So this was a bit of a challenge for me. But as usual, it’s solubles to the rescue - I used Aquasol to carry the design and control the velvet pile, stretched in a hoop.

 

The unevenness of the stitching is on purpose, honest – I deliberately didn’t keep turning the hoop to keep the satin stitch straight along the lines, raggedy seemed more appropriate.

 

Source picture

From this article in the Saturday Guardian 09/05/15:

“Gardens: what to do this week. Try growing summer veg in raised beds made of straw, sow kale, and plant a modern carnation.”

Carnation ‘Blackjack’: ‘It’s clove-like scent makes it great for the cutting garden

Sample design
OK, so it’s a bad week when I have to resort to a photo from the gardening page. But I couldn’t stomach even opening a lot of the newspaper the day after the election results.

And then the obvious way forward for me with these flowers would’ve been layers of white-edged petals, so not that… I decided to pick out the pale outlines only, on a dark red velvet.