An artichoke in Japan

Over the summer my artichoke went on it's travels and now it's in Japan.  Details are on Tracy's blog here.  I'm pretty excited about that!

Finished!!!

I spent a few hours with Tracy today putting the finishing touches to the artichoke.

And here is the finished article!  It's been hard work, but worth it I think.  

Off the frame!

This morning was taken up with tidying up edges and filling gaps so I got it off the frame after lunch.  So it's still not quite finished, but not far to go now.

Almost done!

Still plenty of tidying up to do though.  I'm not happy with the scraggy edges on the last few leaves, there is a hole in the leaf on the right, and I think where the black leaf meets the green leaf needs softening a bit. But I'm really pleased to have got to this stage, and I'm even happy with some parts of it!

One side complete.

Just two more leaves to go now!

A leaf I'm happy with.

Well, almost happy, the outside curve isn't quite right, but other than that I'm happy with it.  Only three leaves left now, and a week to do them in.

Only four leaves left.

The biggest remaining leaf and fiddly bit are done now.  I had my usual crisis of confidence while stitching the right half of the leaf, for some reason that was far harder than the left side, which seemed much easier and smoother.  I'm happy to have finally joined the stem to the main part of the artichoke, it's been floating around on it's own for a while now!

Only five leaves and a fiddly bit left!

I finished the last big leaf yesterday,and I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.  So only one medium leaf, four small ones and a fiddly bit to go!  And less than two weeks left to do it in.

I need more hours in the day...

How many times can I say I haven't made as much progress as I would have liked before it doesn't mean anything any more? I wanted to have the big leaf on the right finished before my definitely last stitch day with Tracy tomorrow.

After some unpicking...

The top right leaf has been giving me some problems.  It's taken a few attempts to get the angle looking about right.  I'm still not sure if it's right but I've started so I'm going to finish!  I want to get this leaf finished and the next one down at least started before Thursday.

Progress today

I got some work done today, but not a massive amount.  I'm not sure if I've got the colour quite right, I think the brown might be bit too dark, so I think I'm going to leave it for today and try again tomorrow!

Silk shading

More than half through the term and it still looked like there was more than half still to stitch...

Made some progress since then, and I think I might be starting to get to grips with the technique, so now its looking like this:

Still a long way to go though, and I only have one stitch day with Tracy left!!!