Well, there's a whole other silver and gold acorn, but this one has a different stitch for the acorn cap.
Silver and gold acorn 1 had a cap stitched with the same wrapping technique as the acorns stitched with silk. But the second one has a cap stitched in an alternating up and down detached buttonhole.
I find this to be a tricky stitch under any circumstances, but the characteristics of this thread (Access Commodities Tambour #7) made it especially challenging. The photos below represent attempt 5 and I haven't decided whether or not I want to try one more time with attempt 6.
After several tries, I determined that an outline of the whole shape was the way to go:
I also had developed another "cheat" to help control the stitch and thread. The photo below shows the first row, worked over a needle to help stabilize the thread. Here you can see how the stitch is supposed to look, with a series of little bundles of two threads. At this point, things are really looking good!
Here's the cap with several rows worked the same way. . . . looking OK, but you can see how in the center rows, the little bundles are tending to disappear. What's happening is that this metallic does not act like a wire in that it does not "crimp" into a shape that stays in place. But unlike a silk thread, it does retain a lot of :"bounce" that makes it tend to bounce back out of the little bundles when the stabilization is removed. So instead of a clear pattern of little bundled threads, it looks more like an overall pattern of loops.
Here's the finished shape. . . with the pattern of alternating bundles pretty well absorbed into the loopy texture.
So, does it stay or does it go? If I had a really good idea on how to keep the little bundles in place, I'd probably take it out and restitch it. But so far. . . inspiration has yet to hit.
Stay tuned.
