My First Monogram

J is for Jean

This is the finished first in my series of monograms. I chose this tulip design as it's one of my Mum's favourite flowers, and the colours I started thinking about a Jacobean theme, but then I decided to shade the yellow so it looks almost gold. The blue and raspberry colour of the tulip are some of the colours my Mum wears a lot, so it suits her I think.

The whole piece is just 6cm high, and the plan is to mount it simply in a 4" ring, with a nice ribbon wrapped around the outer ring to make a decorative frame. (And I know I'm mixing units, but I work in metric and rings work in imperial...)

About the stiches.

The filling of the letter is in long and short stitch shaded over 3 colours (DMC 676, 677 and 729). I'm really pleased with this. In the picture below (taken in much better light than the final one) you can really see the gradient and shine of the threads

mmm shading

The outline in blue (i don't know the colour code as it was an old skein from my pre-super organised stitching collection) is in outline stitch. Is was meant to be stem stitch but I only realised I was laying the thread the wrong way when I'd already done a load of the outline - but I decided to keep it. (Keep thread above needle when going Left to Right = outine, below the needle = stem).

Next it was onto the tulip, which is worked all in padded satin stitch, and then a stem stitch for the... stem. I'm following a theme here...
Leaves are DMC 907, Stem DMC 901, and the tulip that lovely rasbperry shade is DMC 3831.

I varied the amount of padding slightly on each of the elements to add a little variety

Nearly done