WIP: Delicate Flowers (by Pat Mazu)

Before I jump in to this post, please let me wish each and every one of you (or at least, those here in the US) a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Oddly enough, my featured WIP of the day is a miniature Christmas stocking. It is Delicate Flowers, designed by Pat Mazu.

Technique/Materials:  Various canvaswork stitches on green 18ct mono canvas using silk threads.

Background: This project is from the 2003 ANG Chapter Project Book. As the name indicates, this is a book of small projects for chapters to use as programs for meetings. Our chapter did this project as a program sometime in 2004 or 2005. As usual, I changed all the colors around from the original.

Why it's not done: I had trouble determining exactly what colors to make the flowers in the bottom portion of the stocking. I thought that they should look like poinsettias, which is why I was leaning toward the burgundy. In the upper left, I tried this color in one position, with a lighter pink in the center of each flower. I realized that this didn't look like poinsettias at all, so I tried the burgundy in the more dominant center, as seen in the lower right. At some point, it became obvious that the pink was just too much of a contrast, so I needed to find something a bit darker. Somehow it sat like that for a while, and eventually found its way into the neglected projects corner!

What's left to do:  All of the flowers in the bottom, and metallic accents throughout. As I'm working the flowers, I also have to figure out how to tie off all the ends of the green threads at the bottom. Yes, it looks like a mess of ends because it is! There's just no way to bury the ends of the grid threads until after the flowers are stitched. I did a few pinhead stitches, but I like to bury a thread under at least a couple of stitches so the pinheads can't work free.