Top Panel Finished At LAST!

 5 Months of Work....

 It's official! At 12.35 pm this day, I cut the last thread on this panel and called it finished! I seems like it has taken forever to work~ I looked back in my notebook and I started it on the 18th September, so 5 months to the day it took me to start it from start to finish.  After the angels I worked both the large Tudor roses at the bottom...I used gilt milliary for the edge of the petals to give them nice sparkle, and to match the pink and gold colors on the inside of my casket.

  The cartouche came after the roses~ I finally decided to work the entire thing in loupes~ I was thinking perhaps four bow like areas of them, with flat rows of beads in between, but wanted it to look 'lush' so went all out making little beaded wire loupes for eons and eons..... 

  I am getting ready for a needlework seminar at Colonial Williamsburg this next week, so practically no time to stitch for me.... so when the power went out I threw such a fit my husband went and brought me one of his Coleman lanterns~ there was NO WAY I was going to sit in the dark and do nothing.....

 Aside from the great amount of heat it put off....it was enough light for me to work the cartouche....I spent the night hoping it would look as good in the daylight as it did in the dark.

 Once I got the cartouche finished, there was just two things left~ first to attach all the bits and bobs collected in my little box...wings, and angel sashes.... and then to make and attach the garland that goes around it

  I added steel cuts to the wings and like how they sparkle, but no too gaudy....

  Butterflies got their wings~ I like this picture because it shows how dimensional the stumpwork stitching is

This past week I worked on the twilled leaves for the garland, and today got the garland made and attached~ I left this picture big so you can click on it and enjoy all the little details!

My Flat Top Casket Progress

Working Thru....

  I havent posted any progress on my flat top casket for a while because well, there hasn't been much progress to share. I was working on the angels when my Biskie got hit by a car, and I have felt so much guilt that he should not even have been outside  ect ect...that it has been very difficult for me to even look at the angels, let alone work on them. A few minutes was all I could muster before I would get overwhelmed and need to go do something else. I have dreaded working on them....not to mention, the what seemed like zillions of feathers were terrifically boring and they just kept going on forever and ever. 

 I would make a couple of feathers, put them on...make a few more~ they are all different sizes to fit the drawing I made. Once they were on, angel finally got her hair....because I had to work the hair before I could put the head of the wings on

  Once hair was sufficiently full and flowing, I added the head of the wings to cover the bottoms of the feathers. At this point I was still dreading every bead, knowing that I had a whole second angel to work

 This was the angel I was working on at the time, so I have left a gap in her feathers, a missing one, for my precious lil guy. When I finished her feathers, I was anxious to work her hair and finish her wigs so I could just be done with them, finally.

I have a ton of work to do getting ready for next years Bath Textile Summer School, (I will be teaching two classes), so my thought train was as soon as I finished the angels, the cover was going over this panel for a while. I knew if I didnt make myself finish the angels, 10 years from now they would still be unfinished...but something unexpected happened when I got second angel done. It was like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders, and looking at my lid panel...I was excited again. There's not that much left on it actually...

 Suddenly I found myself madly pawing thru my beads looking for colors for the two large roses at the bottom of the panel, and before I knew it, I had chose two sets of colors and was enjoying trying to figure out which ones to use. My son suggested this red, which I liked, but didnt have enough beads of that color, so this petal got unpicked and I went with shades of pink to match the roses in the friezes.

Yesterday I finished one of the roses and yes, I am excited for this panel again! One more rose like this, a garland and the cartouche border and thats it~ I already have all the detached elements for the bugs finished, just have to put them on when I get the cartouche border done.