LE and Broderie Perse

At last the excitement really begins with the addition of the flower vase corners in LE. I have looked forward to this part for months! As I have mentioned before, I purchased some Dutch chintz for this project before the pattern was even released, hoping that I would be able to use it for broderie perse and was delighted to find that it was perfect! However before beginning I shopped my stash to look for other fabric options to include as well. I have only used this technique once before and was not concerned with the background color of the fabric because I was just appliquéing individual flowers. However, when looking at antique quilts I saw that usually the background fabric of the floral fabric matched the background of the quilt so that the stitching did not need to be so precise and so that more details could be kept. With that in mind I ended up eliminating most of the fabrics with darker backgrounds and here is the resulting pile of fabric.



The front left fabric is my Dutch chintz focus fabric. I have 1/2 yard of this fabric - I wish I had more but at $40/yd it will have to do. There are 2 fat quarters of different chintz and then a few fabrics from the stash with similar colors and style of flowers.

I first looked at the pattern to determine the approximate size of flowers that I would need and then began cutting and placing a few. The first few I think I cut too small a seem allowance so we will see how the stitching goes. Anyway, using the pattern as a general guideline I just kept cutting and placing flowers. The pattern was on my light box so I was able to see it through the fabric when placing the flowers. Here is the arrangement of flowers.



As you can see the tiny bias stems that I made in the previous post are also in place. Those were added after the flowers in a way that made sense with the design. Originally I wanted to embroider the stems but I am liking these. Once the leaves and flowers are stitched there will still need to be a few tiny stems added and these will be embroidered. I actually selected the vase fabric first as it helped me visualize the arrangement as I went. After completing the arrangement this far I started auditioning fabrics for the hearts.



I decided on these and then added the hearts and filled the arrangement with leaves.



I had trouble deciding about the leaves. Broderie perse or not. As you see I decided to just cut them out green fabric from templates. I just like the look. And the little sprays where the pattern shows stems and berries are just cut from fabric and will be stitched down with the background showing to keep all the detail intact. Hope that works!

And here are a few of the flowers that got rejected for this vase. Some were cut from a fabric with a red background. I love the flowers but they just didn't seem to work well with the others. Hopefully some of the remaining flowers will make their way into one of the next vases. I must say this process has me hooked. It was just so much fun arranging the bouquet. Now to get stitching! Oh and you might notice a pile of blue pointed ovals from part 3, more samples as I am thinking I might be changing out my originals. I have decided not to make that decision til after all the vases of flowers are stitched!



On a final note, thanks to all for the well wishes on my upcoming back surgery. I have lots of handwork prepped for the long recovery and look forward to reading the blogs and seeing progress on LE. Hope to be back soon!

Happy stitching!