Blast from the past - shisha embroidery

I've been trying to push on finishing my daughter's coat. I'd hoped to have it at least assembled by this weekend, but it didn't work out that way. I'm still working on that last sleeve. So for now, I'm posting some older samples of crafts I've tried.

For quite a few years, I'd been looking for a reason to try shisha embroidery. Last year, I decided to make shisha mirror embroidery the focal point of that year's Christmas decorations.

In this series of photos, the same stitch is used, but I changed the placement of the foundation threads, as well as the length of the surrounding stitches.


The mirrors are first held in place using foundation threads - pairs of them at 90 degree angles, forming a square opening around the middle. While working the ring of stitches, there's a tendency for the foundation threads to pull outwards. With this one, it pulled out way too far. As I worked the rest of the embroidery and embellishments, the mirror ended up falling right out. Fixing it wasn't too much trouble, though.








In this one, I over compensated and ended up making the opening much smaller than it should have been. I didn't mind, though, as I liked the effect of the threads that resulted.











This one was a little more open than I wanted, but it held fine. I also altered the stitch by bringing the needle up right next to the mirror at the start, then finishing the stitch by bringing the needle to be back farther out.











Changing the start and finish points of the stitches really changed the look of the pattern.




You can see the finished decorations here.

We don't have all of them anymore, as several were given away to friends.