Phase 4: Complete

Well, I met my goal of finishing phase 4 before the New Year! It was a lot of work, but I got there in the end. I was on the fifth of six petals when I last posted about this one. So here's the fifth petal complete:

The center isn't as smooth as I would like but it's not bad, and from more than six inches away, any imperfections really aren't noticeable. So I started working on the final petal, trying to get my corners very sharp:

And here is that petal complete:

With all the petals complete, I could finish that last large stem at the top (since you work front to back in JE, it had to wait):

Now it was time to move on to the leaves, which were stitched in woven effect. The first step was to stitch horizontal stitches in groups of two, leaving space for one more horizontal stitch between each group of two. I stitched this layer with a single strand of #1 twisted silver, using a 10T needle to make a large hole so the twisted silver wouldn't be stripped by the fabric:

After I completed this horizontal layer, I did another layer perpendicular to it in my #1 blond gold, making each stitch 5cm apart:

These stitches are actually parallel, but because of the shape of the leaf, there's an optical illusion that makes them look like they're not. Anyway, then I couched these perpendicular stitches down at random intervals between the groups of two horizontal stitches:

Next, I went back and stitched single horizontal stitches in #1 twisted silver between the original groups of two (and over the blond gold perpendicular stitches):

The final step was to couch these stitches down halfway between the original perpendicular rows. I used a single strand of the #1 blond gold to do this:

I think it looks reasonably nice, but the last two steps felt a little cramped, so on the next leaf, I left slightly more room between the pairs of horizontal stitches:

But honestly, I think the leaf turned out about the same and perhaps not as smooth overall:

The leaves are tiny, though, and even from a foot away, they actually look fine in person. So I pressed on to the borders and couched a pair of #3 silver threads around the edges:

At this point, I needed a break from the leaves and decided to do the four trefoil stems, which I stitched in #1 blond gold in diagonal layer:

Once this was done, I completed the final leaf the same way as the first two:

And that was it! My phase 4 Karahana piece is complete:

I do think it turned out beautifully, but I'm really glad this one is done. All those metal threads were quite tricky to work with, and there wasn't a ton of variety in this piece, so I got a bit bored stitching it. Both those factors are probably why this one took me about six months longer to stitch than my phase 3 Hiogi piece, which usually takes most people much longer to do than this one. All-in-all, it took me nearly a year and a half to do. But it's complete at last, so onwards and upwards!