"Mille Fleures"....

 

 

 

Medieval Tapestry Petit-point Update....

I Promised to show you the design for the Tapestry as the kit instructions intend, Dear Readers, and then forgot to take a picture of the packaging showing the two Ladies in the flowery meadow. This is a wonderful kit by Janet Granger, a UK needle artist and miniaturist and I love her kits! That doesn't mean I manage to finish a kit without making a few changes to the design. I hope you will spot the changes I made in the hairstyles for the Ladies, in particular the Lady on the left.

It is difficult to see the new head-dress against the white cloth...

But here the gray threads do stand out well enough to see the shape.

There were a couple of other little changes I wanted to make,

 in particular the left hand Lady's right hand

 disappears into her skirt too much for my liking.

This was easily remedied by adding a couple of stitches in the brown thread....

 creating a slight shadow between the hand and the skirt.

Also a couple of "shadow" stitches in the drape of her skirt

 where it forms the "pocket"... 

she is Not collecting blossoms in her skirt!

And then because I had introduced an extra color into the design pallette 

(the light gray for the head coif)

I decided I should balance it by also adding

 some additional "white" to the background.

If you look carefully you will spot a couple of "test" blossoms in white

 along the Right hand side of the background.

And then I thought if I am adding the white to the background,

 I had better add the blue as well... for balance you understand!

It is really difficult to "test" these ideas while stitching....

They become impossible to "undo" later.

But I liked the effect right away,

 so it was really just about figuring out where

 there was space for all these additional blossoms...!

Which meant completing the background flowers

 that were specified in the chart....

All of these were just the two pink colors

 and only two green colors for the leaves.

Here the skirt on the right is finished

 and I am adding the leaves to the blossoms...

 Here I have added all the greenery that was specified with the design...

I know it looks crowded... 

but there is a lot of extra space... 

and this style of background is known as

 "Mille Fleures" or a Thousand Flowers.....

Surely there is a need for more blossoms in other colors!

And it only took me a short while to decide that

 the greenery for the new blossoms

 needed to be in different colors as well....

If you look closely in the above picture you will see

 a "spring" green for the leaves on those white "daisies" 

I have sprinkled into the design.

And before I went too far with the "daisies"....

 I needed to add the "bluebells" as well...

And they needed their own green as well...

Because they needed to stand apart from the other greenery

 where they stood next to each other

 (no social distancing in this meadow!)

Yes, I was getting carried away by details!

And all this while I am desperately hoping, Dear Readers, 

that I have chosen good colors and not messed up the entire project!

These are the threads for the kit... 

along with the "extras" I have tucked into the selection.

On the very left are the mint green and the white...

The second green, a very "emerald" hue is beside the dark olive green

 and way on the right is the pale gray for the head-dresses.

But it will be impossible to tell the results 

until I get the background stitching underway.

But first I needed to get all the blossoms added... 

and all the greenery too...

(I did a lot of stitching on my vacation week!)

And Finally it was time to start the background... 

that beautiful midnight blue....

So dark it is almost black... but not!

And at last we can get a sense of the changes I have made...

More flowers in the meadow....

More Medieval look to the headdresses...

I still have a long way to go, 

but I am liking the "Mille Fleures"!

I did a few other things during my vacation week, Dear Readers,

 but I will have to show them on another post.

For now, I have been carried away  

by the Medieval Petit-point Tapestry!