Goldwork Finished

... drum roll...

I have named it 

Nautilus

The finishing touch involved tidying up the outline with a fine pearl purl wire and a beautifully dark raspberry colours stranded silk from Colour Streams. 

Pearl purl is a very 'chunky', rather rigid metal thread. It comes as a hollow coil like a spring and looks a little like a string of gold beads. When you stretch it right out you get this beautiful continues coil which, when stitched down with coloured thread results in a fabulous candy stripe outline.
If you are not familiar with pearl purl you can jump over to Needle 'n' Thread where Mary Corbet has several articles on it and how to use it.

You can wrap the coloured threads into the purl before you stitch it down, but I had already cut the skein of silk for another project to the strands weren't long enough. Instead I had to stitch into every single coil along the outline.

It worked a treat. I am really, really happy with this one and look forward to getting it laced up ready to be framed. The best thing about finishing - I can start a new piece! - And trust me, I have had plenty of ideas while stitching this one. If only there were more hours in the day...

Have a fabulous weekend,
Anna x

PS Below are the list of post for this project if you want to check back and see how this piece came about.
The start | Progress 1 | Progress 2 | Progress 3 | Progress 4 | Progress 5