My Flat Top Casket Progress

When Things Go Good......

Keep Going

  Been a few weekends since I shared progress on my casket....the pillars went slow and were super boring....but one has to keep plugging away at the boring parts...to get to the fun stuff. The peacocks.....ugggggg...the peacocks, that's a different story

  Did anything go right with these little devils? I suppose so, because they turned out fairly well....I'm not super excited about them, well...hang on, I AM.....super excited they are DONE. Both panels worth...which brings me to a 'tip' for ya'll.  Really think about multiples of anything in your design. Will you have enough thread or beads of the right colors....not just for one...but (in my case) four? Will you want do work multiples of the same thing...over and over and over????   I have my answer. No. These beasties were horrible....horrible to work  And when I finished one.....there were three more to work. I had a real problem picking bead colours, because I am using all antique beads, I just cant run to the store to buy another colour....I have to work with the colours I have, in the amounts I have...and I ran in to a real problem with the "amount" factor.  I spent hours trying colour combinations that didn't work, ripping things out ect ect...  I thought about making two differently coloured pairs....but in the end decided I wanted them all the same, because the entire casket as a whole is elements of the same scene/area.  I ended up working the four bodies first, as some of the body colour was going to be in the tails, but I could change that if I ran out in the bodies....then four wings came next, then the wicked tails...stitched over kid leather. Murder on my fingers. Murder on my precious size 16 bead needles. But. They. Are. Done.

 Stumpwork, of any sort, is like working a huge puzzle~ you may want to go right to the fun stuff...but things have an order of working. For example, the pond wall. I chose my colours....was in the mood to work something quick and easy....had my string padding in place.....but nope..  Couldn't work the wall until I worked the snail that was sitting on top of it.  Doesn't she look like an eye???  She's my little secret spy snail.

 And then, I still couldn't work the wall because the swan's heads were over some of it....so this weekend, was swan time~ WOO HOO!  I had been wanting and dreaming about working these swans for ...forever. The start was not grand. No. Not even 'good'. Didn't like the colours of white I had chosen...so those got unpicked. Then I worked the padding in grey, and when I went to put the first whites over it, didn't like that, so switched to white padding...which meant all the grey padding had to be unpicked....but no biggie...I had a plan, and the energy around these swans was good. So good, that they literally flew forth from my fingertips...as in, less than a day ya'll!!!

 What was one, became two... and though I was now technically 'free' to work the blasted wall I had been aiming at, I just couldn't let them live on my casket with no beaks!!!!

  Perhaps it was lil mudhead's fault everything went so well this weekend~ he is always good luck for my stitching. This is the palette of colours just for the beaks...and yes, all of these colours are in them!

 Beaks...and wall, finito!

Still have much more to go on this panel, but it's getting there....I have to work the water next, before I can finish the swans and give them their wings...then this side will be down to just flowers. Just flowers, I say....there are a zillion petals and leaves I'm not really looking forward to doing...but hey, one gets energetic when the light starts to squeak out the end of the tunnel!  Normally I would be excited for next weekend, 'water' time...but I will probably end up skipping my stitching time for track meets and Easter. 

Happy Stitching!