Details matter. Sometimes, we might be tempted to overlook or forego the little details, thinking that they would never be noticed and never be missed. But in hand embroidery, it’s often the little details that make the biggest difference.

Last week, I showed you the finished goldwork edge around the inside cinquefoil on the Medallion Project. One recurring question from that article was how to achieve the sharp corners with the couched Japanese gold thread. You know, that was a problematic part for me, too!

The easiest path to take when couching the gold would have been to work in two continuous lengths of the Japanese gold, side-by-side, so that the threads only had to be plunged twice while filling that whole area – once at the beginning of the couching and once when the whole outline around the cinquefoil was filled. As efficient and dreamily pleasant as it would have been to not have to stop to plunge threads, the sharp angles at each corner would’ve been lost with that approach.

The only approach that would keep the integrity of the design and achieve the effect that I wanted to achieve was to plunge the ends of the gold thread at every angle – a process that made sense but took decidedly more time.

Today, we’ll look at how I took the sharp corners on the cinquefoil shape, using Japanese gold thread.