stretching my comfort zone: silk organza appliqué - 2

now onto the still life with twig and vase.......

the vase should have been a jam jar, but i could not face the screw top part! one challenge too far for my drawing skills - i was tempted to leave out the water so that i could avoid the refraction where the twig and water meet, but made myself do it

surprisingly i found it easier to stitch this than the samples - possibly as there were fewer different elements, but also because this one has an organza layer on top of the image pieces, this anchors them and reduces the potential for fraying - also i find stitching along the edges easier than stitching at right angles to them 

i dithered over the edges for the twig inside the vase - i wanted them to appear slightly veiled or paler because of the glass, so decided to stitch them before laying the vase shape over the top - the alternative would have been to use a lighter colour or weight of thread, but i wanted the actual stitches to be less prominent - i should also have stitched the water rim at the back of the vase under the vase layer, but oops....  

doing it that way takes a bit more planning - it feels right to me although this is not what Emily does

although it barely shows i stitched with my usual variegated threads, picking a lighter shade of browns for one side of the twig, oddly the darker section of grey thread used for the vase ended up on the opposite side - maybe i should have been more careful there

several learning points but i feel it's a good start for me