TUSAL and some progress on Deep Peace

Hi Everyone,

I never meant to be gone so long! I have been very distracted with medical appointments, and other such annoyances!

He is my long overdue September TUSAL:

Lots of colors here!

There is some progress on Deep Peace, but it has been slow going. This is not the kind of piece you can work on when you are overly tired or distracted. I found that I was making a lot of mistakes so I put it aside for a few days.

I finished filling in the big "D".

click pictures to enlarge

I still think the top filling is too dark. It seems to obscure the dragonfly and the butterfly, however I am leaving it alone for now.
Next I worked on the 5 "eep Peace". The directions call for the "eep Peaces" to be a darker color brown, and the rest of the verse done in a lighter shade, however I decided to complete the entire verse in the same color. It seemed to be more cohesive that way.

There is a blue wave over the first line, and some wavy design on the top that is made up of back stitching and cross stitch.

Next I stitched the little designs on the corners of the "D".
The horizontal box on the top was stitched with a diagonal Queen stitch.

The vertical box on the bottom of the "D" was done in Satin stitch.

Next came the illuminated initials for the last two lines.

After that, I worked on the curvy scrolling lines in celery colored silk.

I put my initials and the year above the last line. The designer embroidered a very curvy '98 there, in the same style as the curvy lines below. She put her initials in one of the Forget-me-nots on the edge. There was no way that I could have made a '12 into those curvy lines, and I wanted all the forget-me-not corners to be alike, so I put both initials and date here. I hope it isn't too abrupt of a style change.

So here is where I am with it so far.

 I am beginning the vines at the top, but I was making so many mistakes, I had to stop. I am picking it up again this evening, so hopefully I can get some more done on this. It is coming along, but oh, so slowly.

I received my metal supplies in the mail.

Oh boy! More fun to come! Stay tuned!