Drippy Water on Embroidered Lettering

It was a week ago this past Monday that I mentioned I wanted to finish “in” last week, on the embroidered maniturgium that I’m working on.

I finished it.

And this week, during some snatched stitching time, I started “Altum.”

I had this idea as I was moving along on the lettering that I wanted to add a little downward movement (if that’s the right term) to the sense of water depth.

I’m not exactly sure what I was thinking – but it was something along the lines of trying to pull a little touch of each layer of shading into the layer below it. Glints of water? Dripping water?

Water moves, after all, and I found that the layers of shading needed a touch of Something More to hopefully enliven the sense of water a bit.

So I made things drippy.

Here, you can see part of duc, where I haven’t done anything but stitch the layers of shading. I’ll have to go back and add some stitches, because…

…it was when I got to in that I concocted a plan and tested it.

Starting from the top of the letters, I took each shade of blue and worked some random straight stitches in the lighter shade above over, onto the darker shade below.

I did this down the letter.

You can see it here on the A in Altum, too.

It’s not as noticeable from farther away (see the very top photo), but it’s just a little hint of something that adds some downward movement to the shaded stitching.

I think I like it.

I better like it. At this point, it would be a mess to go back and pick it out. Ha!

The deep down secret hope to be finished with the lettering this week were alas unfulfilled. We’ve reached Friday, so I know it’s not going to happen. Next week? Yes. I should be able to manage that. Wish me luck!

Next week, we’ll also have a little sneak peek of a completely unrelated project that we’re working on. Ironically, it’s also shades of blue.

So that’s where we are on things. I hope you’ve got a captivating project going, too! And that you have a wonderful weekend with your needle and thread!