Yes, it is autumn here in Toronto, where we have been having some really spectacular weather recently, with mild, sunny days and cool nights. So it is not appropriate at all for me to have revived this project,
Breath of Spring, but, that's what I've done.
Mary Corbet posted a photo of her grasshopper from this project a
few weeks ago, which made me guiltily aware that I hadn't touched mine since March! I was hung up on this bee:
I stitched the left wing at least three times in long and short stitch with varying degrees of success. This time I stitched them both with closely worked rows of stem stitch in one strand of DMC floss. You may recall that I am doing something similar for the
Viceroy butterfly on the Meadow quilt too. Anyway, I'm finally happy with the bee!
I went on to lay in a lot of the green stems and background leaves in more stem stitch, with one or two strands of floss:
There are a
lot of inconsistencies in the instructions. I'm sure that
Inspirations has published corrections, but I am just taking the opportunity to do my own thing instead. These large flat leaves below are one example:
They were supposed to be worked in a very bright Kelly green solid coloured floss, but instead I borrowed some of the hand dyed floss from the grasshopper. I covered the outline with split stitch in a co-ordinating DMC floss (which you can see on the left), and then worked a slightly open fly stitch with two strands of the hand dye (on the right).
When it's finished I want the flowers to be the first thing you see, not the leaves, so I'm hoping that these more muted colours and open stitches for the leaves will blend into the background a little better.
It would be nice to have this done by spring, because I am thinking of putting it on the front of a new spring/summer bag. However, that is probably a long shot, based on past experience!
