Needle Work

In order to separate the figure from the whole piece, my first task was to remove very carefully the overlapping leafy elements and the goldwork frame. To do this, I snipped threads from the back of the whole piece and picked them out bit by bit with tweezers, folding back the overlapping parts of the design to expose the figure and see how far I had to snip things to uncover it. Deep down inside, I had hoped that I could salvage even the parts of the figure that were stitched over with the surrounding decorative elements. Once I had all the overlapping elements released, I folded those back out of the way to assess the damage to the figure. It’s not all that bad in the scheme of things, but the holes are still pretty evident, so this area will definitely need to be covered with a new frame. Notice the difference in the colors of blue between the exposed figure and the part of the figure that was covered with the goldwork frame! It makes the exposed figure look pretty dingy...