Ok, maybe they aren’t supposed to be scales. In fact, I’m pretty sure they’re supposed to be feathers.

But I made what I think is a bad choice when embroidering the feathers on the hummingbird chest.

I liked the initial colors and stitches I showed you last week, but then I got carried away with the emerald green. Instead of feathers, I ended up with scales.

This is the result up close. I used fly stitch to embroider an out lie around the scales…errrr…feathers on the chest, in emerald green around the greeny-blues, and in dark purple around the purples.

Up close, I don’t really like it.

From different angles, I don’t really like it.

It looks like the poor fellow’s wearing a bubble jacket.

From far away, it isn’t as bad – I don’t dislike it as much – but only if I squint.

And if you have to squint in order to like something just a little bit, that’s a bad sign.

The most obvious problem: the emerald green is too dark, and the outlines, instead of providing just a hint of depth, become pronounced edges. They look sharp and hard, especially in relation to that very smooth head floating above.

You know, I don’t mind the dark on the purple part so much – the purple part of the chest seems to invite a bit of vividness.

But for me, it doesn’t work with the green.

My plan is to try a more moderate shade of the colors used in that area instead. I also want a bit of texture in there – something to help individualize the feathers a bit without the obvious dark outlining.

I’ll embroider the little band on the neck next, though, just to double-check my impressions before picking out the dark green outlines. We’ll see what happens!

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Have your say below!

If you’d like to follow along with the Secret Garden Hummingbirds project, you can find all the articles relating to this project arranged in chronological order in the Secret Garden Project Index.