Not nearly as small

It was a bit of a switch to go from the hummingbird, which is about 2" across on 40ct, back to Winds of Color, 10" round on 24ct congress cloth. Even though they're so different, I love working on all kinds of ground fabrics (except for the really tough cotton jean fabric used for Montmellick work, but that's another story). I was so glad to see, from one of the comments, that my gauze work may inspire one stitcher to try 40ct again.

Yesterday I finished the ground on Winds. This was done in a stitch called Victorian step, and was another area shaded by combining different colors of floss in the needle. I'll add some rivers on top of this later.

I've since moved on to an area on the left side, midway between the uppermost tree and the woman's arm. It's stitched entirely in white, but the stitch slant changes for each row, so it provides directional shading. At least, that's what it says in the instructions. I've never really thought of this play of light as "shading", so it will be interesting to see the final effect as the other sections around it get filled in.