Slow progress is being acheived on my Indian Paintbrush landscape that I have been working on. With my other classwork and out of town visitors, it’s not as far along as I had hoped it would be, but it will get there eventually.

I started on the foreground, larger flowers. The center one needed to be completed first as it had overlaps from the flower on the right. The furthest away petal is stitched down first and then other petals are added over top, working forward as I go.

Here’s the progress of the center flower. I am using a very small needle to avoid fraying the cotton organdy fabric. I also push the needle up along side the petal and then back down into the petal. Hopefully, the fabric doesn’t fray as much this way.

Here’s the piece after all three foreground flowers were stitched down. I’m still thinking about whether the background flowers need any suggestion of stems. If I do add any, it will be thin thread in a running stitch.

After looking at the foreground flowers and comparing them to my original photo, I realized that I needed some darker values in the centers and by the stems to create more depth. I decided to use acrylic paint to achieve this. I dry brushed the paint on carefully in very small amounts at a time as I didn’t want to get too much on. It would be very difficult to remove or cover excess paint.

And here it is so far. I will probably add some other shades of orange into the foreground flowers so they look a bit more realistic. I am also going to add some yellow green to the leaves. Then I think that I might add some suggestions of blue flowers where there are blue blotches in the foreground. Perhaps the common camas? How would you add suggestions of blue flowers? Stitching? Painting? More applique? Something else? I’d love to hear your thoughts.