Well, I finished that little shisha embroidery tree that I showed you day before yesterday.

I might have gone wee bit overboard, but you know what? That’s ok! It was fun, it will work for what I need it for, and, more to the point, it’s finished!

And that means I can move on to the other tree I need to finish.

I’m not sure why I’m sprouting trees all over the place lately.

Maybe I’m going through a growth spurt.

The foundation stitches that make up the swirls and slopes of the tree are tambour embroidery worked in a copper metallic (DMC Diamant), and then I whipped the resulting chain stitch with a gold metallic.

The photo above, taken at a very strange angle, is the tree with all the whip stitching finished.

When the piece catches the light, the gold and the copper sparkle quite a bit, and the mirrors gleam like they should. It’s hard to catch that when I’m sitting in front of the frame, and at this point, I was too lazy to set up a photo shoot somewhere else. (Sorry!)

I could have stopped at this point, but you know how it is when you’re working with sparkly and flashy things. Why stop?

Besides, I was just getting into Martin Chuzzlewit, which is a fantastic 33-hour long audiobook (if you like Dickens), and I wasn’t really ready to switch gears.

So, as you can see, I started adding beads.

Beads, beads, beads. They are fun – and I love this particular color and type, even though I would have liked to have had them in a 15/0 rather than an 11/0. The 11/0 are somewhat large.

Still…

It dressed up ok.

And I can get the one shot out of the project that I need. It will look something like this:

…only larger, with a few more swirls and mirrors in it.

That’s right. You won’t even know it’s a tree!

Funny what we go through, just to get an abstract, isolated photo of original stitchery, isn’t it?

Now, knots! I must finish this one next. Then, it’s satin stitch – a little demo piece to answer some recent questions. Fingers crossed, I’ll finish both today.

I hope your Thursday involves some quality time with your needle and thread! Enjoy the day!