The trunk is complete! Hurrah!

Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut

Slow progress continues on the 17th century pastoral panel.

I'm still avoiding completing the tree trunk. . . moving on to work on some of the acorns.  Here are the first three completed.

The bottoms of the nuts are in ceylon stitch, while the caps are in a woven technique working the silk thread over and under a trellis of vertical linen base threads.

The right hand acorn shows the cap with the linen base threads in place.

And here is the "weaving" step in progress:

A Rather Troublesome Leaf

Let me digress briefly to bemoan the travails of surface embroidery for those of us who are counted thread stitchers at heart.  Ah, the comfort of knowing exactly where the needle is supposed to go. . . and the stress of having to decide exactly where to place a stitch.

Behold Exhibit 1, the latest leaf in my pastoral panel, the yellow and green one on the lower left:

According to the instructions, this leaf was supposed to be a similar shape to the ones above it, with scalloped edges on either side.  Sadly, the pattern -- in indelible ink of course -- didn't trace exactly that way on the fabric. . . . and the lower part of the upper leaf was way too close to create a scalloped edge along the top.

Since there weren't too many options available (assuming I was NOT going to rip out), I tried to make it look like the top of the leaf might be folded back, obscuring the scalloped edge.

Right now, it's still kind of bugging me, but probably once a little more stitching is done, my annoyance will move on to other things!

Another Leaf

A little progress to report -- one little striped leaf (the one at the lower left):