Poppy Pouch - Flowers

Last time I shared pictures, I had half a flower completed. We had our monthly Japanese embroidery meetup the next day and I got to work completing both flowers.

I'm really happy with how they came out. Coloring that template really helped me visualize where to put the different shades of blue.

Over the weekend, we had our fourth lesson and covered how to stitch the last element of the flowers: the leaves. We want the leaves to look like they are "painted" we also want to get the right angle. The same way we would stitch leaves in Japanese silk embroidery.

1st attempt

2nd attempt

So for the leaves, instead of making multiple short lines of beads, I went with long strands of beads. These are then couched down making them curve. I had some trouble getting this right, so for comparison purpose I'm also including my first attempt (above) for you to see the difference.

The leaves are in the background and I need to keep them there, so the darker blue was not used. For darker areas, I used the medium blue (not too much) and predominantly used the light blue and crystal.

We have two lessons left. We'll be covering one more technique, for the background of the flowers, and the last lesson will be spent discussing how to do the finishing. In the meantime, I'm getting busy with the other side. 

As I mentioned in my previous post, it looks like I have a very high chance I could finish the embroidery before the end of lessons. So my objective for the next two weeks is to complete the flowers and petals, and the vertical to and fro on both sides. If I get those done, I'll then have two weeks to complete the background surrounding the flowers.