70th Bag: 2nd side

Fig.1

The weather was a little cooler when I began the second side of the 70th birthday bag, so I tried to give the figures slightly warmer clothes - long sleeves, boots and more leggings. I was also more generous in using specialist threads - I didn't need to ration them as much on the home stretch.

I also tried out a few Kantha stitches - such as the laced running stitch in the Fig.1 jerkin and in the yellow leggings, the 'marching ants' in the blue trousers and the blue top of Figure 2. 

Fig 2

I used quite a bit of variegated thread in perle 5, or even 3. It gives a lovely dense coverage.                            
The greatest challenge is hair - getting variety as well as texture and colour. Bullion knots and French knots proved very useful.

One disadvantage of using the black and white print fabric is that I get only white faces and need to find other ways of showing complexion and ethnicity. The medium is not subtle enough to shade skin tone.

I tried to include a few headscarves but found it unexpectedly more difficult to get the effect I wanted than I expected. At least one of my attempts ended up looking more like hair than a headscarf!

I incorporated quite a few Kantha stitches.

The best coverage came from rows of stem stitch. I managed also to use some gold thread.

Variegated thread worked a treat. One of my grand-daughters had given me some amazing hanks for Christmas which I incorporated.



It was quite easy to vary the embroidery of the four repeated shapes to get quite a variety of figures and shapes.

My Julia Gillard pieces gave more scope for incorporating different stances and activities, but this allowed for a surprising variety in a different way.

Here are the two sides - 70 figures - finished. The un-embroidered lower rows allow for the bottom of the bag.

My next post, hopefully while recovering from my knee reconstruction tomorrow,  will show construction and finish!