What is "too challenging" when it comes to embroidery?

So there's blackwork embroidery, which is black floss on a white background, and there is whitework, which is white floss on a white background, but what is embroidery with black floss on a black background called?

Click to make bigger!

I've had this wool gabardine military jacket since college. I really like it. It fits me pretty well through the shoulders - a difficult thing to find in clothing I haven't made myself. But the poor thing got holes in it.

And the holes got more noticeable after I dyed it¹, so I thought embroidering flowers over the holes would be cool. And since I prefer being surreptitious, black floss was the obvious color choice.

This required a lot of lighting and magnification. And gabardine is really tightly woven, so getting the needle through it sometimes required pliers. It took a couple months of embroidering 15 minutes every day, and sometimes that was just to set everything up².

Also, chain stitching? Ugh.

I used patterns from Zakka Embroidery by Yumiko Higuchi, and I love the way it turned out!


1. For real this time, with dye that dyes wool, not Rit, my only option back then, which left it a marbled purply burgundy.
2. Hooping a tailored jacket is ... challenging. I had to use clamps to force the hoop shut on occasion. It's exciting when they pop off!