Rosy Posy Finished

I was very nervous when cutting the design out; I was expecting beads to fall all over the floor. Fortunately with Fray Check and very sharp scissors, it came out ok. I used spray-on glue to attach the flower to the background material.

The before:

After:

Now either back to Antique Mirrors, or Goldfish, or wait! I have to make Christmas ornaments for sale to support animal shelters - excellent excuses here...

Rosy Posy done

Finished with all the stitching. Next is cutting it out and mounting it, should be interesting. I think lots of Fray Check will be called for,

Beading

Got the goodies package from Mary Alice - yay! She sent me 2 packs of blue beads; the small and the large ones. I debated about using the small beads for the petals, for a more refined look, but decided on the bigger beads instead. I'm in the middle of doing the outer petals, using the para technique with a large pale blue bead and a small medium blue bead. I will finish this up before going back to Japanese embroidery.

Progress with the kikko's so far...

Kikko

Back to Antique Mirrors. I'm improving on the kikko's. The pencil marks certainly helped. Here's the blue kikko - I was attempting to use the diagonal holding to better define the shape. Not a great success, but compared to previous attempts, much improved. I may re-stitch it later.

Then I realize that where the padding cotton does not form a right angle with the top twisted thread - due to the way I stitch the padding cotton - that it requires more padding. So where the angle is shallow, I added 2 more strands of padding cotton. The bottom half done brown kikko is the latest - and the best. I'll see how it looks once I've completed it with the lighter brown color. I also tried to make a better corner by exaggerating the point.

I'm thinking of staying with this piece instead of switching to Goldfish next week, which I had initially planned. I had framed up the Goldfish already. The fabric is a really pretty watery patterned silk.

Rosy Posy Leaves

Finished the leaves. There are 3 values of green beads - light, medium and dark. I particularly like the medium green filling; they are tiny and I can fill in to make them look like chipped glass. I think I used the solid (tsume) technique instead of the seed stitch (para) technique.The light green beads are larger and thus not fill in as well.

Here's the piece to be shelved until I get more blue beads. I plan to frame it on a background instead of finishing it as a brooch.