Sacred Kingfisher

After I realize how expensive church linen is, I decided to use cotton sateen instead. When I was tracing the design, I found that the cotton sateen I have is too rough, so I use Southern Belle muslin instead.

Since I wasted a lot of time hunting for the correct colors the last time, I decided to organize my work area. I use a music stand for the book and instructions. This is also a great place to put my magnets and park all my needles, lined up per the instructions for the section under work. I organized the 40+ skeins into bins of 5 each, and then retrieve and line up the skeins required for the section I'm working on in a separate bin on top. Once the section is finished, these will be filed back into the big bin and the next set retrieved into the top bin, and so on.

Since the instructions specified Eterna silk, which is no longer available, I determined the colors required and plan to substitute Japanese silk instead. For a description of the Eterna silk colors, see EternaSilkColors.  Another idea is to split the Glorianna threads, especially for the several values of the "jonquil" side feathers - maybe I can just use the Glorianna (variegated) narcissus instead. I may try this out later.
Here's what I have for today.

The Eterna silk thread behaved perfectly today! When I was doing this in winter, the silk thread would pick up static, splay out and snag on the frame. I hated it then. Today the silk was so nice that I was able to use a 24-inch single ply and split-outline all the pink crab apple flowers, and the silk was still in perfect shape at the end, and it was not clinging every which way.

Details of crab apple padding.

Yoshi keeping me company on my other JE stand.

Didn't want to quit today! I was "in the zone". I am quite pleased with the way the crab apple blossoms are turning out. Partly it is because of the well behaving Eterna silk, and partly due to the glass laying tool shown here. I have only used the tekobari after starting JE, and I have never used a laying tool before. But this glass laying tool is wonderful! Not to mention beautiful. Its tip is smooth so the silk slides down easily, and it is not sharp! Sometimes when I use the tekobari if I'm not careful I'll snag the adjacent satin stitches and mess up the silk.