It's finished!

Here is a photo of the finished Spring Arbor. I am surprised how little time it took as it has18 fancy stitches, the majority of which were new to me. By the way, I only started it last Saturday afternoon. Again the photo does not show this at it's best. The middle three trees are decorated with beads, as is the border. The pink stitches are done with Caron 'Waterlilies' over dyed silk which gives a very subtle colour change as you stitch. There was however, a significant bit of 'reverse stitching' on this one. The leaves on the tree on the far right are, funnily enough, done in leaf stitch and the flowers with a Smyrna cross. I followed the stitch instructions and did all the leaves only to find that the mid-rib of the leaf projected into the flower space. This would then have involved stitching through the leaf thread to get to complete the corner of the flower, splitting the thread. Does this make sense? Basically if anyone else out there has a go at this follow the chart rather than the individual stitch instructions for this tree and the one next to it as that is not quite right either!

This morning I sorted the threads for the Summer Arbor but I'm going to wait to start that one as I need to spend some time on the St Nicholas tree skirt.

As of today this next photo shows my progress so far.