Rust Red Iris- Top Petal

This is the top petal about as I'm doing it - since some of it has been cut off at the bottom by my design of the hood, I'll be doing from above the line :-


Here's the petal, outlined in thread and all marked up with stitch direction, and approximate divisions for the colours :-

Trish Burr said to start from the top outer edge and go down, but I thought I'd do 'light before dark'. I was worried that I'd run out of space for all 5 colours required, in spite of my planning.

And it hasn't worked. The 'tower' of lightest colour going up through the middle of the petal isn't high enough and is the wrong shape - too squat. The stitch direction along the bottom isn't right. The stitches curve as they go up the petal, and I just don't know what I'm doing at the bottom there.

So I'm going to take the scissors to this, and start again, this time from the top edge (listening to the designer!). It might work from bottom up and I just stuffed it up, or it may be that this particular shape only works when stitched one way. I don't know. I'm looking forward to seeing a petal in all it's shading tho :-)