Stitch Club: plane leaf

Series: Stitch Club #7

Stitch Club from TextileArtist.org
Workshop: Using Natural Materials in Embroidery
Host: Claire de Waard website – Instagram
Aim: Consider natural textures, through the use of foraged materials.

As soon as I came across this workshop in the Stitch Club library, I knew exactly what bit of natural material I wanted to use. I had collected this autumn plane leaf and used it as an experiment in preserving leaves with glycerin some time ago. It had worked quite well and I ended up with a flexible leaf that would, with care, stand up to being sewn through.

As the plane leaf is so large, I had the idea to create another leaf shape inside it. I wouldn’t be able to do any dense stitching on the leaf though, so I very carefully cut an oak leaf from the centre.

I did a line of running stitch around the edge of the leaf to attach it to the fabric, but later decided that I wasn’t happy with the broken line, so I did another line of running stitch over it to fill in the gaps. Then I attached the edge of the hole to the fabric with buttonhole stitch and, again, later added to it by backstitching around the legs of the buttonhole so the shape is surrounded by blocks.

I had thought to leave the oak-leaf-shaped hole empty, or just stitch in some veins, but then I came across a tutorial for bullion knots and decided that filling in the centre with 60–70 bullion knots — when I hadn’t so far stitched a single one — would be a good idea. Luckily it worked! (I did do a few practise ones before starting on the leaf.)

The last task was to tidy the edges, which I did by couching some silky jewellery cord around both the outer edge of the plane leaf and the oak leaf shape.