Starting on the Calyxes

Once I had my flowers in, I scattered every green thread I had over the pattern piece, and performed a triage.

I ended up with this. It’s not terribly informative, now I look at it, if you aren’t me, but it gives you a sense, perhaps, of a variety of tones and types of thread. Some of them are a little heavy and need to be deployed cautiously, some of them I don’t have much of and need to be careful with for other reasons.

There was much thought needed about the calyxes and stems. Did I want something contrasting, more solid? Did I continue in the same style, maybe tweaking my stitch choice? What about stitch direction? Should I keep to the verticals? Contours? Horizontals?

You can see here what I ended up with.

The two outer leaves have the stitch lines running horizontally, but a little echoing the contour.

The leaf that is curling out towards us has lines following the edges and lines following the central vein, and then I left gaps. I hope that creates a little the sense of the highlights on a strongly shaped leaf.

For the calyx itself, I have used colour and stitch direction to create the sense of the leaves wrapping around one another, and the dark colours of the major shape turn further and merge into the stem.

Yes, working so far, I think.