Phase 2: Pinks Segment Completed

Weekends are when I accomplish the most embroidery, and this weekend was no exception. I was excited to try out my new color scheme for the pinks segment of the fan, and I got straight to work on that Friday night. First, I added another purple flower because it was in the foreground:

Then it was time to test out my theory about using silver next to the purple flax leaf segment to help distinguish between the two a little better. So I did the flower in the background in silver, with a dark purple center:

I was really liking the contrast, but the question was what to do with those leaves. I had originally planned to do them in silver, but that wouldn't work now. Fortunately, I discovered the most beautiful, pale, slightly bluish green among my threads. I had planned to use this color for the bamboo leaves, so I thought it would be nice to echo it in this segment as well. 

I stripped the silk core from a short length of #1 silver, twisted the outer silver back up, and used my breath to steam and set the twist. Then I blended the silver with the soft green and stitched the leaves:

I absolutely love how it turned out! The silver and green add just the right amount of contrast. I wanted to keep going on this segment because I was liking it so much, but my next JE lesson was coming up in a week, and I wanted to make sure I was ready to learn new techniques.

So on Saturday, I started laying the foundation for another segment with two strands of navy blue flat silk:

It took me three hours to do this much. I admit, I was finding it very tedious at this point, but I pressed on because I needed the foundation finished so I could learn the kikko (or hexagonal) pattern at my next lesson, as that's what overlays this foundation. Here is the finished foundation:

It's pretty dark, no denying. But once it has the silver hexagon pattern over it, I think it will appear a little less overwhelmingly dark. It took me the rest of my free time on Saturday to finish it.

But with that done, on Sunday I was free to go back to my pinks! I stitched one more purple flower next to the blue:

The center of this fourth flower wasn't quite dead center — mainly because I struggled a bit to figure out where to place the threads on the petals that were cut off by the lattice segment. But it's not very noticeable unless you zoom way in or are only inches away. And I couldn't take it out and try to redo it either because the silk was already separating and weakening with the number of tiny stitches going into the center.  

So I chalked it up to the learning process and moved on to the last flower, which I again stitched in silver:

As you can see, I added another little leaf in the green. And here's the picture showing everything I've done so far:

I feel so proud! Three segments completed already! And I think they look lovely together. I'm so happy with my color choices up to this point. 😊 Alas, for now, I've done as much as I can do until I learn some new techniques.

At my next lesson, I should be able to learn the kikko pattern for the navy blue segment and a lattice with knots pattern for the far left segment. Once those are done, I can work on the maple leaves, bamboo leaves, and plum blossoms. But I think it's really coming along beautifully, and I'm so happy I decided to do this fan.