Pearl Competition

I am entering an embroidery competition. We were given a pack with three small pieces of silk and 3 pearl beads. This is to celebrate the 30th anniversary of our guild. The instructions are to use at least one piece of silk and one bead. I decided to create a dragon using a copyright dover image.

I did a few trial pieces on hessian to check that the design was OK. The first one was done in white but with different stitches. I didn't feel that there was enough contrast in the texture so decided to make a coloured dragon. The one on the top right was not completed because the machine decided that it couldn't cope with stitching through the layers. I think the dark orange stitching was too small.

I stitched a bottom layer of a weave pattern. The machine got jammed up in the middle of the stitching (bottom right) and no matter what I did, it would not start again. I was worried that it was broken. Given that this was still a trial, I started again. The one on the  bottom right is the final sample. The colour in the photo is very orange but in real life it is a bright yellow.

The image below is of the final piece, although it needs pressing and framing, I am hoping that I will be able to get rid of the puckers. The background is stitched in cream embroidery thread and the detail is in gold metallic thread. Unfortunately, metallic thread always looks poor in my photos. It looks very glamorous and shiny when viewed in person. I'll post another entry when it is framed and ready for presentation.