Progress at Last!

The image on the left is the photo I was sent to work from. It's upside down cause that is what it looks like when the bride is carrying the flowers. I got alot of work done on the lilies yesterday. I finished off the embroidery on the petals. I got the ground material silk and cotton backing mounted on my big frame. Then got all the felt padding sewn on. I've never done any padded work before so it will be interesting to see how this works out!

I was still trying to work out how to get the petals into the right shape to applique onto the ground fabric. I was thinking how to do the leaves when it hit me. The padding of the petals didn't reach all the way to the outside shape, so if I cut one more felt peice, exactly the same size as the silk petals, I could then tack the petal to the felt, using the felt as the template. This gave me the best of both worlds, a template that I could leave in place and also one more layer of padding to make sure the petal has the perfect profile!

Below are two images. The first are the silk petals. There is a small amount of stem stitch done in the base of the petals. I used three colours of green silk. One strand of 12 strand Eterna silk was used. The second image is the padded petals on the frame. These will eventually be surrounded in a frame of pearls and gold cording.