Struggling with Superimposed Stitches

It took me longer than I expected. Things kept coming up on the weekend and I didn't want to share another update of just a pink area. In my last post I mentioned that the next step was tying down the foundation. The process involves putting in short holding stitches across the foundation using a 1/2 twist (couching thread) of the same color as the foundation. A different color can be used for effect, but this is not necessary for my cloud.

Normally, I would have stitched the superimposed cherry blossoms first and then put in holding stitches on the leftover open areas. However, as I've been having a hard time with the flowers I decided to do this step first. It will help keep my foundation in place and prevent it from shifting while I stitch. In the picture below, my finger points to where I stopped for the day. The area on the left has been held down and you can see that it looks smoother than the right.

Here is a before and after picture.

The next step is putting back the outline of the cherry blossoms. There is a number of ways to do this, here I am using the tracing paper method.

The elements are drawn on a piece of tracing paper, which is then held in place and the lines are stitched. You can use Japanese back stitch but here I am using the line of held thread technique as it gives me a nicer curve.

Once all the elements are transferred, I removed the tracing paper.

Here you can see all 5 cherry blossoms.

Here is where I was back to struggling. No matter what I did I couldn't stitch a petal I was happy with. I'm so used to seeing images of beautifully stitched round petals and no matter what I did, I couldn't recreate that. This weekend, I had a nice chat with my mentor on superimposed stitches and we looked at examples together. It turns out I was looking at this all wrong, jagged edges ARE okay. The smooth lines will come when you look at the piece from a distance. We are so used to having our noses almost pressed up to our stitching that we forget to take a step back and really look at what we've done. Once I got that in my head, I was able to get one petal stitched.

That was one hell of a pep talk, because look, I managed to stitch one whole flower! I'm so proud (and relieved).

So there will be three red flowers and two that will be silver. I originally wanted to do them in red and white silk, but the instructions ask they be done in silver and gold. Since I ditched the gold, I figured I will compromise and use the silver so I don't get in trouble if I submit my piece for review one day. 

By the way, ignore that silver petal. I was thinking about my progress the day after and was puzzled about the color of that petal. Why was it yellowish? Shouldn't it be closer to white? I took another look at the pictures I took and quickly realized that I used the wrong #1 silver. I used the twisted metal thread instead of the regular one. No harm done as it's only one petal, but I'm glad I caught it.