Rust Red Iris - The Stem

It was exciting changing to a different hue of green.

The stem was in stem stitch (appropriate enough).

That lightest part of the long part of the stem. I did that in a slanted stitch (so it ended up with the stitches closer together than stem stitches) to make it stand out more. In the design, that colour looks a lot lighter and stands out more, but I do have the right colours.

On getting the right colours to use for the project - I have 4 boxes of DMC thread, very few of which have thread numbers on them. Kit sent me her DMC colour card, so I was able to match the colours. I still can't believe how many shades of green there are. I have 4/5 of a box of green and I still had a lot of trouble getting the right ones.

It's going to be a race whether I receive all the terracotta colours from the on-line thread company in the mail before I get up to needing them. The colour card was too old to have them, and there was just no way I was going to be able to match them from the picture in the book (yes, I spent an hour trying). And no numbers on the cards meant trying to match the thread colours to possible colours on the computer screen as another alternative .... uh uh. I just bought 15 terracotta/mahogany shades new. It was a lot easier!

Something about working with the design. I find that I alternate between working with the design as closely as possible, and working 'freelance' to make the piece look 'right'. It's not possible for me to follow the design perfectly so I do need to add in some adjustment factor for where I've made accidental changes. I'm just talking about placing single threads and stitches here.

Given that sort of thinking - the cream foldover halfway down the bud has some light brown markings on it. I didn't do them. I thought it looked fine as it was. I have had trouble with threads (even tho they are single threads) looking too bulky, and have actually groomed them in with a fingernail on occasion to get them to physically blend. I just wasn't go to go there with the brown when I was already happy.

Onto the right hand bud, which I'm looking forward to. It managed to loose it's frilled edge when I sewed the long leaf, so I drew it back in, and did a few extra stitches on the leaf edge to compensate where I'd made more of an 'innie' on the bud. I did outline the outline - I don't know how the frills disappeared!