Brush Embroidery

Brush embroidery is one of my favourite techniques.

For brush embroidery, I use stiff icing. (Stiff but not so stiff as for piping flowers with tips.) 

As you see on the cookies in the video, I scribe outlines of flowers and leaves before I pipe. They are pretty simple, but I can't get the right shape of flowers, leaves or anything without it...

My flower are about 2.5cm and I pipe seven approx. 2mm dots for one petal. I pipe all the dots for one petal in a row, and split them into two with the thin side of a slightly damp flat paintbrush. Then I connect one of the halves to the half of the next dot.
And I carefully make the joints pointy, using the paintbrush.

 

The paintbrush needs to be "slightly damp." If it's too wet, you can't get sharp looks.  

There are different type of brush embroidery out there. Some people make the insides of outlines more "blurred." There's no right method. I hope you'll find your own favourite style!

 

 

By the way, English is not my first language and it's pretty hard to explain these things in English!! I studied English for 6 years at junior high and high school, and my major at uni was English literature. I did book editing and translating (English to Japanese) for years. I've been married to an Australian for 17 years though I've never lived outside Japan. In spite of all these things, I still struggle with writing and speaking English... I hope my English writing skills will improve through this blogging.