Progressing with the 'Painted Ladies' piece

Hello everyone!  A special, warm welcome to anyone visiting from the Inspirations Magazine newsletter!  I'm delighted to have been featured there this morning. 

=)  

It's been rather difficult to keep up with blogging of late for a few reasons, but mostly because I'm still dealing with headaches which either start with or are made worse by wearing the glasses I need in order to be able to deal with photos and blog posts.  I'm braving it today though lest new visitors think Sew in Love is one of the (sadly) many dormant blogs, and also to bring you up to speed on how one of my current projects is going.

Here you can see how far I've now got on the Helen M Stevens' 'Painted Ladies' piece from her book 'Embroidered Butterflies'.  I started it last September and it's got stalled and neglected many times.  I love her work, but I find it rather hard to emulate.  Anyone else feel the same?

This second photo was the last shot I posted of this piece a few months ago and it got stuck there for quite some time after my having done that big, double-coloured leaf you see in the foreground.

Actually, I was finding the snake stitch needed for the thicker stems rather hard to do, so I shied off for a while - as is my wont.  I really have to stop doing that - allowing projects to get stalled for so long because I'm scared of a certain part!

Anyway, I had a go and it seemed to go OK.

Then it was onto the pinky-brown stems and the curling tendrils, which were working by couching Kreinik Very Fine Braid 102C in single, double and even triple rows down with their 102C Cord.

The short straight stitches at the tips of the berries were also worked in Kreinik Cord, this time 087C.

The stranded cottons used so far have been from DMC (the greens and brown) and Anchor (the oranges and reds).

The next stage is another one that fills me with dread and that I feel inclined to delay indefinitely and that's the butterflies.  Getting all those little, bitty areas worked all in the same radial directions and without being able to use guidelines like I could in the leaves (it would clutter up the outline just too much) is frankly scary.  Also, the tracing is disappearing and needs retouching.  Not easy.  However, as I want to enter it in the Sheffield Fayre next weekend, I need to get on with it, and that right quickly!

I've also been working a whole new cross stitch piece for the Fayre and I'll show you that soon.

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2015