To all who offered sound advice on my stitching dilemma mentioned yesterday, many thanks!

I spent yesterday afternoon and early evening fiddling, and this is what I did. Not 100% sure of part of it, but let’s chat it up, anyway! And then I’ll show you what’s next in this grand adventure.

Well, I’ve experienced the first I-Must-Pick-This-Out Moment on the Secret Garden embroidery project.

I’m pretty sure there will be other similar moments, so I’m not fretting over it. There’s no point in fretting over unstitching, because it is bound to happen now and then. If you look at it as part of the process, it’s not as detrimental to your overall stitching morale!

I’m having So Much Fun embroidering the leaves on the Secret Garden project!!

The small and medium-small leaves work up really quickly if you’re using fishbone stitch and fly stitch, which we talked about the other day.

And with hopes of spring springing eternal, the green is a mood lifter right now, too. Winter’s loosening up its hold here in Kansas – the sun is shining, the temperature is creeping upwards, almost all the snow is gone, the birds are singing cheerily of a morning. And stitching green leaves makes me ever-hopeful that spring is just around the corner.

Today, we’ll look at a full shot of all the vines finished and a good amount of the small leaves finished, and we’ll discuss some more tips for working the small and medium sized leaves on the project.

You will find small leaves in great abundance on the Secret Garden Hummingbirds project!

And while stitching too many of one shape in an embroidery design can become tedious after a while, the nice thing about leaves is that there are So Many Options for embroidering them.

Today, since some of you have expressed interest in starting the leaves, I thought I’d give a brief overview and some pointers, so you can plow full speed ahead.