Hydrangea Leaves

The leaves look nice with the veins  in. This fabric (Sha) turns out to be really easy to stitch - as there are definite delineated rows, making weft foundation really a breeze to do!

Hydrangea Leaf

Another leaf done.

Hydrangea Leaf Bicolor

The leaf with SSH before the veins - I got lazy and didn't do the SSH for the lighter portion - but most of the lighter green is less than 1 cm:

After the veins:

Hydrangea Leaf bicolor

I tried several different approaches to the hydrangea leaf. This was one when I intended to use a blending  thread to cover the shared hole of the 2 colors on the right side. It did not turn out well; the colors are too different and being flat silk instead of twisted it became very obvious and jarring.

I replaced the lighter color with the next darker green called out in the box chart; even though this green is not of the same family as the dark green. I used the long and short stitch technique to add the second green. I can use the SSH to (hopefully) "blend" the 2 colors at the junction.

Hydrangea Leaves

Couched the veins on the leaf. I was waiting for my order of YLI #100 silk thread to arrive to avoid making couching thread; even though the color of the YLI thread does not match exactly the silk - it is not obvious.
On the other hand, still not good with line of staggered diagonals, but it will have to do and hopefully it will get better.