Split Stitch Badge

This badge was made as an end of reign gift for outgoing King, Cornelius. It is a painted silk ground, with silk split stitch. I used a single strand of Maderia silk thread. Next time I am going with a filament silk with a bit more body. This was my first got at split stitch, I think it turned out pretty well. It's a good technique when you need to have alot of detail on a small piece. It took about 20 hours of work. The badge is about 10cm square. From what I hear the recipient liked it alot. Its nice when work is appreciated!

The pattern arrived as a line drawing only. This is the coloured image I used to check that I had all the colours right.

I was unable to get the right coloured blue silk ground. So I bought some plain white and a bottle of silk paint. I painted the ground (which only took a few minutes and very, very little paint!!), waited for it to dry and used a chalk pencil to transfer the design.

This is a close up of one of the heraldic motifs. This is only a couple of centimetres across in real life.