Rosy Posy Progress

I started on the padding on the petals, but ran out of beads. I thought I was using the wrong beads, so I used the other blue beads instead, but ran out of that also. Grrrr! So now the petals are on hold. The lower half were done with the small beads, and the upper half with the bigger beads.

Did the line of staggered diagonals for the stems. They turned out quite nice.

Did the outlines for the leaves. The light green, medium green, and dark green beads are all different types of beads. Next I'll be filling in the inside of the leaves.

While waiting for Mary Alice's response for the petals, I plan to alternate between Antique Mirrors and Goldfish. I'll finish the beaded piece as much as I can before shelving it.

Japanese beading

Mary Alice taught a Beginning Japanese Beading class that was quite fun. The project is a rose brooch. It is much easier than Antique Mirrors, I will have to make a conscious effort not to neglect Antique Mirrors while working on the beading. Discipline, discipline!

Mary Alice agreed with me that the kikko was badly done, so here's the revision. I made a thinner twisted thread, and used a T-square to line up the weft. It looks better now.

I got two more pieces - one is Midori Matsushima's goldfish, taught at Blue Bonnet Studio a few years ago:

Mary Alice talked me into doing Phase 8 - Fuzzy Effect, with this piece Ducks on rocks (Is that a drink?!) I think I'm set for life.

Kikko

The kikko's did slightly better today. I'm using the ruler to line up the stitches along the weft line; and still had to put in some "sneaky" stitches when stitching the kikko corners. I also maintained tension on the twisted thread while pulling from the top and pushing from the bottom. This allows the twist to remain more constant.

I am going to wait for Mary Alice's suggestions instead of making things up by myself.

Antique Mirror

I'm back to doing the Japanese embroidery piece - as Mary Alice is coming this weekend for a class. The chrysanthemums are done, the later ones look better than the earlier ones (the brown ones on the right side are the earliest ones)

The kikko on the other hand, was bad. According to the Susan Stevens book, she suggested using cardboard underneath to help define the edge, and flat silk in preference to twisted silk. According to the box chart, the kikko's should be padded with 8 strands of cotton, then stitched with twisted silk. After trying several variations and gotten to the point where I cannot re-stitch anymore without ruining it, I'm finally using an acid-free watercolor paper stock, then 4 strands of cotton padding on top, then twisted silk.

The first kikko was really badly stitched - although thankfully it doesn't look as bad as it really is; the twisted silk covers up a multitude of sins.

Hopefully after seeing everybody else's work in the upcoming JE class, I'll be inspired to do better and be less sloppy!