Next up in my exploration of Suzhou silk embroidery in Lu Lu’s Silk Art Gallery is random stitch! This beautiful lotus flower looks like an ink painting. It’s embroidery! But how do they get the smudged edges???  They build it up through layers and layers of stitches in random directions with slight color variations. The flower itself is in parallel stitches, but the smudged background is entirely covered in tiny silk stitching in random directions. I took closeup photos to show you (below), because nobody can believe it without actually seeing it. It is an unbelievable amount of effort.

That was a random-stitch embroidery in Chinese style. The gallery also had Western-style art done in random stitch. Check this one out! It was hard to get a good photo since it was next to the door and the light kept reflecting on the glass. But you can use the door at the right of the photo to see the scale of the piece. It’s enormous! The proprietor told me that it took an entire team of embroiderers a year and a half, and I definitely believe it.  And see all the other embroideries lying around in the photo? There were three full rooms like this one, with every wall completely covered. I was in heaven 🙂

See that little forest to the back right of the embroidered picture? Check it out up close! 

It is totally covered in layers of stitches in a variety of forest colors. What about the rocks in the stream? Here is part of one:

I’m going to show one more close-up. I don’t remember where in the picture this was. Again, layers and layers of stitches.

The whole piece, once more. Now that you’ve seen the details it’s even more impressive.