Hello there! One of my favorite embroidery techniques is Kamal Kadai work.
My previous attempts at Kamal Kadai, I stitched flowers using 6 strand cotton floss. I was curious to see how different it would look with pearl cotton and using two colors.
To start, I referred to this
photo tutorial.
I drew a 3.5 inch by 3.5 inch square with a water soluble pen onto my fabric.
Find the center of the square - draw lines and create 4 boxes within that square.
Then I made a mark every 1/4 inch - so there were 6 marks total between the middle box line and each corner ... hopefully that makes sense and the photo helps with the explanation!
Starting from the lower left square, bring your needle up from the top mark and stitch over the lowest mark on the upper right square (as seen above).
Continue by stitching from the next mark in the upper right square and stitch down to the next mark in the lower left square. Keep doing this back and forth until you finish stitching to each mark (as seen below). You will then want to couch down in the middle.
Now it is time to start weaving with your second color.
If you want to see a more detailed tutorial on how to weave -
check out my first Kamal Kadai flower post for more step by step instructions.
Once you have weaved both squares, you will repeat the steps.
Stitch your lines and couch them down in the middle.
All finished weaving! Now my favorite part - removing the pens lines with water!
There you have it - two color pearl cotton Kamal Kadai stitch.
I really liked how this turned out. I think pearl cotton is much easier to use for this stitch than the cotton floss.
The two color effect is great for this stitch also - I now want to try it with other colors. Black and white would be cool or green and red for Christmas!
If you want to see my other version of the Kamal Kadai flower in cotton floss -
check out this post!
See you next time!
