Needle Painting Attempt 1

I decided to practice my needle painting skills this weekend. I turned to my new Trish Burr book for advice and tried to follow the instructions there as best I could.

I used four shades of green Au Ver à Soie silk threads — specifically, Soie d'Alger:

I started with the lightest shade and began working along the outer edge of my leaf, starting on the inside and stitching down on the outer edge:

One strand of the silk seems just a bit thicker than one strand of DMC floss, so it filled the area nicely. Once I finished the first row, I was pretty pleased with it:

Next, I added a slightly darker shade of green by coming up in the fabric and going down into the previous row:

I was still feeling pretty good about it at this point. The angle might not have been perfect, but it was looking okay to me. So I moved on to the third shade:

I definitely started having problems with the angle here, but the blending didn't seem too bad to me. So I persevered with the fourth and final shade, the very darkest of my four greens:

The angle was almost nonexistent here. The stitches seemed practically horizontal instead of at a 45-degree angle, which is where I started the first row. Possibly, I have too many colors here as well because the shading doesn't feel quite natural anymore.

I really wasn't entirely sure what was wrong, so I decided to try the other side and see if it would look any better. I did what Trish Burr does in her book and reversed the order of the colors for this half of the petal, starting with the darkest shade on the outer edge:

Not too bad, so I progressed to the next shade of green, making a conscious effort to maintain the same angle of stitches this time:

The stitches were a little too tight and small at the top, which created a slight ridge on the left side. But this was just for practice, so I didn't bother ripping everything out. I just continued on:

The blending wasn't too bad on this row, but I could already tell I was not going to like the finished leaf. And I didn't:

It just looks all wrong. I think a huge part of the problem is the angle of the stitches on the right. It would look way better if both sides of the leaf were at a 45-degree angle. The angle on the left looks much better and far more natural.

I also think I need to do less of the lightest and darkest colors. I tried to do them in almost even amounts, but that isn't really how light and shadow work. It's not always an equal gradation. I think if I did more of the middle two shades and just slightly touched the edges and inner sides with the lighter and darker shades it might look better. So that is what I'll try on my next leaf.

Sometimes messing up is the only way to figure out what works and what doesn't. I stitched a crappy leaf, it's true. But hopefully because of it, my next leaf will be much better.