Busy, busy, busy

I know it is hard to tell, but I have added two more stitched rocks to my grotto! During class, we did rocks all over the place depending on technique so we could try each one. As I'm finishing them off, I'm trying to start with the back and work forward so there is a natural sort of overlap. I did the blue and green bouche thread rock second from the left at the back. I had to make a couple of more mixes for that one, which helped to reinforce the twisting technique. Then I did the yellow/orange silk gimp rock in front of it. I actually did two layers because the one layer - like the blue and orange silk gimp rock at the back left - is very flat. I was please with the texture, although in hindsight, a layer of felt would have used less gimp - so I would have more for other things. The gimp was made by Tricia, specially for the kit, and it is really spectacular. But them I'm a sucker for silk of any sort.

Now to the coif. I'm still doing tests as some new colours of Soie Perlee have arrived, since there were a couple of places where I wasn't getting quite what I wanted. This daffodil is a case in point. I didn't like the gold and yellow contrast and the green was to bright when compared with my photos of the demi-lune purse at Agecroft that I took the daffodil from. So, I did some stitching tests to see what really when together because it was really hard to tell with the spools. Turns out it was a great idea, because two of the yellows look totally different than what I expected. When I have time (yes you can laugh here) I want to make up a whole sampler of the colours of Soie Perlee stitched up since that is really the only way to see how things will truly look. So, I'll show the final dafodill when it is done on the coif, you can see the start in the last photo. Here is the tudor rose - on the coif!!! Yes, I've finally started the stitching on the coif. Nobody wanted to take it home at last week's meeting - several people want to eventually, but they want to practice a bit more. I'm not completely happy with this because of the straight lines, so I'm going to play with things a bit so see how to fix it and add that to the instructions. It may be I need to work the petals from the inside out to the edges, rather than the tips in method I used. I just find it easier to get the outer edge looking nice if I start there, but the inside to the outer edge is actually the method used on some of the petals on the demi-lune purse - I had help when I looked over the photos.

So here is how it looks as of March 22, 2010. Stay tuned.