Leafy greens ... and oranges!

Take a look at the other end of our sofa.  I'm sitting in the bit that remains.  So much for a workroom of my own, I hardly ever actually stitch in there!!

Actually, I don't mind not having my own room anymore (I'll probably lose it when we move), as long as I can have my own desk and a decent amount of storage space.  I realised that it doesn't matter about having things all 'drawing room proper' for guests as we have them so infrequently and, as an old friend said, 'You live here, don't you?'

Back on topic.....

Here you can see the whole of my two current WIPs and what stage they're at, although we're just going to talk about the green and orange leaf on the freestyle piece today.

To be honest, the idea of getting both shades of the leaf in line bewildered me somewhat (and that's nothing compared to the butterflies later on!)  So, I decided the only way to get them in line was to draw some lines onto the fabric.  I think Trish Burr does this, so it's hardly an 'unprofessional' way to deal with the problem.  It's just that Helen M Stevens seems to have a natural flair for just getting stuff in perfect line.  OK, she stitches all day every day and has a real gift for it, but I need help!  The next few shots will show how the leaf developed and how I managed to keep it in line.

Inner section more or less in line with the drawn guide markings (above) and how I managed to adjust for deviations from the guidelines (below).  The few helper stitches I put in at this stage were done more in line with the green stitches than anything else.

Here's the main shading on the leaf complete.  Of course, there'll be a vein to add, which will bring it to life much more.  The odd thing was that, although both 'rings' were worked in one strand, the outer one appears thicker.  I suppose this is more to do with the 'geography' of the work than the fact that the green is DMC and the oranges are both Anchor.

Here's most of the piece with the newest leaf in the foreground.

The next things to do are the stems and then the rest of the plant bits - leaf veins, trims on the berries and the vine-type parts that are wrapped around the lower stems.  I hope to have that complete for the next update.

To close today, here's Sir's current WIP - his entire PhD spread across two screens!!  He's done the first draft and is now re-working the newest sections, and fine-tuning and finalising the rest.  He hopes to be in a position to submit at the end of the month.

All being well, I'll be back Sunday with my Anchor Pearl Cotton #12 collection and early next week with some WIP photos from the cross stitch piece.

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2015