Planning the front..

I started to plan the design for the embroidery on the rest of the coat with a decision: there’ll be nothing on the sleeves. The whole thing will be utterly overpowering if I’m not careful.

Then, further, the idea of having a group of leaves, almost overlaid, or at the very least touching one another, and adding one small, pale, early bud. The paper cut outs look very scrappy, but I am finding that as I become more experienced, and more taken up with my ideas and how to embody them, I don’t need quite the same level of clarity and simplicity in what I’m looking at to make a decision as I used to. That’s encouraging!

However, that does, occasionally, turn out not to be the case. I was intending to have a bud on the upper front of the jacket.

Looking at this, I’m really not sure that it will work. I think I need to have the bit I am certain of in place, and worry about the rest of it later. I might even end up assembling the jacket and having to do any last embroidery with everything in place except the lining, which would be distinctly trying.

So, back to the simplicity of the leaf arrangement in the lower corner.

I do have a challenge next, in that there are a couple of small holes I need to darn before I get started on the embroidery.

The original pattern, by the way, has patch pockets. They are not going to be involved here. I’m not all that keen on pockets (I’m what Trinny and Susannah used to call a Bag Lady!) and in this case they would interfere with my plans. If I decide the garment does need pockets, they’ll be put in the lining.