Goldilocks and the Green Beads

I sometimes spend way too much time fussing over finding the 'just right' embroidery result. Hence, I call myself 'Goldilocks'! True to form, my latest Goldilockian adventure concerned some green beads on Wild Child.

I'm working on the four leaves along the left and right sides, on the bottom half of the purse.

The two leaves at the bottom have been drawing most of my attention lately. In the original design, both sides of the leaves are filled with para (pairs of beads stitched down like seed stitch). The lighter side has light green beads and the darker side has dark green beads. Makes sense, right? I decided that I wanted to try filling only one side of the leaves with beads--the lighter side--and see how I liked the contrast between beads/no beads.

I couldn't make up my mind how I wanted to stitch the green beads, so I tried a couple of different ways. The first attempt was using light green beads on the light side, which is close to how the original was stitched. I made a slight change, however. I clustered the beads nearer the central vein and then spread them out as I approached the outer edge of the leaf. I also went from pairs of beads to single beads. It looked pretty.

However, Goldilocks said, 'Hmmmm, too light' and I moved on to the leaf on the right hand side. This time, I tried using the darker beads and then mixed in the lighter beads to shade the filling. As on the left leaf, I clustered the beads around the central vein and spread them out towards the edge. I quite liked the effect of the shading and I also liked the use of the darker beads.

Goldilocks had a different opinion and commented, 'Nice shading, but you're not shading with beads anywhere else on this piece so how does that work?' Unfortunately, I had to agree with her although I didn't want to.

I ripped out both sets of beads. By the way, I had couched down all the para pairs on the light green side and ripping out couched beads is not fun! The only good part of it was that I learned that I don't need to worry about the beads coming loose in other two-bead para areas. They are very well set in place. Fortunately, I hadn't yet couched the para on the darker set of beads and they came out easily.

I had a little bit of help with the stitching, emphasis on 'little'. This was a very rare occurrence. He doesn't usually hang out with me when I'm stitching and we may never see him here again!

The next thing I tried on the leaves, hoping to please Goldilocks, was using only the dark green beads on the light side of the leaf and only single beads. The para groups seemed a little clumpy and I wanted more space between the beads, although I was still going to group them more closely towards the centre and have them disperse as they approached the leaf edge.

The beads are still clumpier than I would like, and they aren't dispersed evenly enough.

I also finished off the filling on the little bits of side leaves that are above the two green leaves on the bottom. I used single light green beads. Very little of these leaves is visible, so I wanted a simple, unobtrusive filling.

Here are all the green leaves with their beads on the bottom portion of the purse:

The green beads on the lower leaves are good enough, but not 'just right'. Goldilocks is going to have to be quiet for now.