Owl Side One - completed

Hope you had a great weekend and enjoyed some serious stitching time. Saturday was my "stitching with my peeps" day; enjoyed a wonderful breakfast and morning of stitching with 9 of my local stitchy friends. I made progress on my owl, enjoyed seeing what everyone else was working on and just enjoyed being with my friends for the first time in a long time.

After taking in the advice of readers about the owl I changed things up a bit. On the upper outside edges of the owl's body, I continued stitching with 2 strands of Burmilana. As I moved further down the sides I began using only 1 strand of Burmilana. The result is a lighter, more feathery look to the stitches. You can see the difference of 2 vs 1 strand in the photo on the left.  I was happy with the look and decided there was no need to rip out the 2 strand stitches. I also followed more advice and decided to just alternate thread colors rather than strictly follow the painted canvas. It made much more sense to me to stitch this particular canvas this way.  

Next up, the wing which was fun to stitch. First, it is the last section of side one of the owl, so naturally I was delighted to get started on it. A couching pattern is used. Laying a strand of Kreinik #12 braid for the foundation you must completely couch one foundation row before laying the second .

Four shades of Burmilana are used on the wing; row one uses color one and couch pattern one all across the row. Row two uses color two and couch pattern two across the row, and so on with row three and four; continue repeating rows one through four until you reach the end. The photograph does not do the stitching justice; the flow between body and wing are more subtle in person than in the picture. You can see she the shiny braid peeking through the stitches. I think the wing colors and pattern contrast nicely between wing and body. I like it. I have a little clean up to do before moving on to finishing side two. It's great to take photos of your work when looking for imperfections, missed stitches etc. as, like it or not, the camera makes every flaw stand out.

I'll be working on the second side next; I've already stitched the back of the head and will proceed with the body and wing of side two. Then I'll need to decide where the actual feathers will be placed. Yes, there are real feathers included in the kit. The instructions suggest using them as tail feathers, but there are enough included that I might be able to overlay them somewhere on the bird besides the tail. We'll discuss that next time. Meanwhile thank you very much for visiting today, will see you soon.