#flax leaf

[johnthestitcher]

The Flax Leaf Variations Temari

Here are all four variations together. (Clockwise from top) Triangle, Pentagon, Square, and Hexagon. All of these are displayed separately in my archive if you are new to my blog and would like more explanation on their construction.

[johnthestitcher]

Flax Leaf Temari - Shooting Star

When I was stitching my four Flax Leaf variations, someone looked at the red/white/black one I had made and said ‘Shooting Star!’ - so here is a Shooting Star. I was originally going to have orange centers, but the lemon yellow was overpowering, so I reversed the color placement. Luckily, I had tried both out in digital art first, so there was no ripping out of stitches.

[johnthestitcher]

Flax Leaf Temari #3 - Pentagons

This was by far the most interesting of the three so far - even I am impressed!

I only had a thick red metallic thread, I decided to go for a finer stark white thread to make the flax leaves. As you can tell from the third picture, you have to follow a pattern crisscrossing between the pentagons through the 4-part diamonds and 6-part triangles with every other stitch - or it doesn’t work. Once you finish a round you should end up back where you started. This design used 5 rounds of continuous stitching to complete the pattern. I also decided to stitch the white thread under the red intersections rather than over, which would have necessitated another thickness of thread to tack all the intersections down. As with most temari (this is the 68th completely different design I have stitched) everything is in the planning and the preparation; the actual embroidery stitching is rather simple after all that work.

BTW - You might be asking 'Isn't all white thread white?' - hardly. 'White' thread is usually off-white; ecru is some shade of beige, and 'snow/nieve/blanco' is usually bright white. If you think I'm going to waste my time stitching 'black/red/off-white' - as my mother would say - 'You have another 'think' coming.'

[johnthestitcher]

Flax Leaf Temari #2 - Squares

Unlike the previous Flax Leaf temari that used triangles, this one uses squares, of which there are 6 on a sphere. Once you create the motif, you stitch these starburst lines (otherwise called pine needles) in all the motifs first, and then you connect the ends of those lines together in one continuous line of stitching. What looks like ‘teeth’ or the edges of the leaves was stitched in 4 continuous steps, crisscrossing over the edges of the ‘square’ from one motif to the next going around the ball until you get back to the origin point. It’s the type of explanation that could really use a YouTube video to show why it works instead of a couple of paragraphs on a page. The next temari in the series uses pentagons (12 on a sphere), so I might have to use a thinner thread for #3. Stay tuned! Temari #3 has a jazzy color scheme!

[johnthestitcher]

Flax Leaf Temari #1- ‘Country Night’

Not sure why this design has the moniker ‘Country Night’ - ‘Country BLAH’ would be a better title! I am going to start ignoring these beige background temari directives and substitute in a color!

There are four temari in this Flax Leaf series. Flax leaves are another traditional Japanese design, and supposedly can be done with any triangle shape that has one 45° angle. ‘Country Night’ uses a triangular shape; the next temari uses a square, the third a pentagon, and the fourth a hexagon. Stay tuned for more Flax Leaf Temari!

“With God as my witness, I will never stitch boring color-schemed temari again!”

[johnthestitcher]

Flax Leaf Temari #4 - Filigree

The last of the four planned temari using a flax leaf design inside a different shape; This was as fill for a large hexagon. Lots and lots of planning for this one; the hardest part is keeping the triangles in the hexagon grid equal and also judging the center of these triangles by eye - they are only 1.3 cm on a side - TINY! Once again - instead of stitching OVER the intersections, I stitched under them to eliminate yet another junction that needed to be tacked down.

Please see my archive for the other temari in this set.