Gold work lesson 2

As the second lesson in gold work began with Nicola Jarvis, she took time to show me the couched goldwork spiral section that she felt was the best. Placing her fingers on either side of the small section, I snapped the photo below. What makes this section better than the rest? With the exception of the bottom left row, the spacing between the rows is tight and even. The couching threads form a good brick pattern and are almost all perpendicular to the gold thread.It isn't perfect, but, taking time to snap this photo and study it, I can see what I aiming for and what I still have to work on.We then moved on to couching down a single line of Japanese thread on a curved line. The design I'll be working for the RSN goldwork course in July has a leaf in it so this was good practice for the future. I found this to be much easier than the spiral. I'd done this technique before so I felt more confident and it's easier to manage one thread than two when couching them down. The only tricky bit is that Japanese thread doesn't really like to crease or fold tightly at a point in the line. Real gold thread acts like wire so the points are sharp and crisp. Using my mellor and tweezers (gently!) I got good points and Nicola was very happy with the result.As the sun moved over the conservatory, we moved on to couching two threads on an elliptical shape. The method is the same as for a circle except you must make good sharp points at each end as you're couching. I found it very, very difficult to get points sharp enough.In addition to that challenge, I started to pull the couching stitches too tightly which caused the felt padding to squish in, a bit like a tiny mountain rising out of the fabric. The technique isn't difficult, but my stitching was too tight. It was time to move on...whew!The last thing we did that day was to couch down two rows of Japanese thread in a curved shape. This shape is not padded. I will be working a stem in the course this summer and this is what I'll need to do then so practicing it in the same way was the best way for me to learn and feel confident during the course.Laying double threads and couching them on a gentle curve wasn't too difficult. The ends had to be sharply turned and again, using both my needle sticking up through the fabric to crease the thread and my tweezers to pinch it, I managed to get pretty good turns. The spacing between the rows continued to improve so I ended the day feeling pretty good!