Cherry Blossoms Finished

 Well, at long last, I have finished stitching all the cherry blossoms in my Japanese embroidery piece, along with all the small stems, leaves, and buds:

I'm really loving the overall look of the piece. It's so pretty and delicate. I think this is about the halfway point, and it's nice to see it coming together.

I also redid a petal on the blossom to the far left. If you recall, I had one very lopsided petal, which bothered me excessively. Here's a close-up of the original so you can see how lopsided it was (the upper right petal):

I just wasn't happy with it before, so I reverse-stitched half the petal and redid it. This is how it looks now:

It's much better now. My cherry blossoms are by no means perfect, of course, but I am still reasonably satisfied with them. I think it's important to be patient with yourself when learning anything new. Sometimes, you have to be satisfied with what you're capable of doing at a particular moment in time. Someday my cherry blossoms will be better, but right now, this seems pretty good for a first effort.

And what an effort! I estimate it took me between 8 and 10 hours to stitch this much. Which seems insane given how small the piece is. But I feel really proud that I'm getting a little better at the techniques — placing the stitches, getting the right angles and spacing, stroking the silk. Obviously, there's still a lot of room for improvement, but I'm seeing progress, and that means a lot to me.

Full confession: I did the last blossom, the far-right stem with buds, and the bottom two leaves while somewhat tipsy. I didn't plan it that way. I just happened to have had a lovely cocktail (my brother's recipe, which I have affectionately named the Phil Collins), and when that delightful buzz hit, I suddenly felt inspired to do some JE. My sober self probably would have advised against it, but my tipsy self felt supremely confident and quite capable of tackling anything, so I went to it.

I can honestly say that's the most relaxed I've ever been while working on this JE project. 😂 That level of relaxation had two effects: first, my back didn't hurt, so I was able to stitch longer without an icepack, and second, the stitching seemed to come easier to me. I wasn't so tense and anxious. I let go a little, and I think it helped. This is not to say that I will always do JE in a slightly inebriated state, but I have no regrets about doing it this time because I enjoyed stitching this piece more than I usually do. Sometimes it's good to let go a little.

At any rate, up next are the chrysanthemums and larger leaves. These definitely seem trickier, and I'm a little more nervous about doing them. But Carol-Anne Conway gave me some tips for the chrysanthemums, so I'm going to try that and see how it goes.

I had finally set up an online lesson with a real JE teacher and was so looking forward to it, but there was some kind of mix-up, and she accidentally scheduled some other group class for the same day and time, so sadly, I will not be getting any help this weekend after all. I suggested maybe we reschedule to the following weekend, but I haven't heard back. So it looks like I'm on my own for a while longer.

But that's okay. I said from the beginning that I didn't mind going it alone. And I really don't. There are plenty of nice people online who will happily give a beginner a few tips, so I will make do with that. Maybe someday I'll have a real teacher to help me, but for now, I will press on and just figure it out!