Stay-cation, Days 3 and 4

Since we had our family Christmas celebration on Christmas Eve, we relaxed yesterday. Baby Girl headed home in the morning to beat the traffic, Dearly Beloved settled down for a long winter nap, and I piled up a stack of Christmas DVD's and CD's to watch or listen to and stitched all day.

Literally all day.

And this is the result:

I love the idea, I love the design, I love the spot motifs on the lower section of the ornament.

Now the plan was to do the finishing this morning.  Notice, that was the plan. While I was sipping the first installment of the day's caffeine allotment, the project on top of the pile of potential 2018 projects starting sending out signals. Loud signals. Extremely loud signals. 

And I succumbed.

So today I went back to a workshop project that's been aging in the stash for almost ten years.

Jacobean Silk Purl Flower

Tricia Wilson Nguyen

I spent the day very carefully couching gilt thread around the outline--if you look closely, you'll see there are two curlicues left to do. Once they're done, I can start filling the the design with silk purl.

There is a method to my madness. One of the projects I want to do in 2018 is the mirror surround from Part II of the Cabinet of Curiosities class. Many of the flowers in the mirror surround use the same techniques as this project, so this is serving as my practice piece.