Embroidered Book Cover - The small element

I mentioned last time that I needed a small flower or leaf to fit into the lower right hand corner curlique.

I saw something on one of the English Bookbindings and modified it a bit.

I'm not sure that the shape is quite contemporaneous, and I also think it looked better before I couched it's outlines, because it's quite a delicate figure.

In spite of all that, I really like it.

I've started on the top - um, what is that flower called? I'm going to call it a poppy for the moment. I'm using a slightly different orange compared to the 2 orange'd leaf near the bottom - damned if I know where the lighter orange thread has gotten to.

I need to re-do it's ovary. It looks too much like a pineapple with the new lighter orange. I'll use the very lightest colour I'm going to use in that flower - a light cream. - and make the cross hatching a bit less dense while I'm at it. Now the similarity to a pineapple has struck me, it just won't go away.

I didn't know what to call that cross hatched part of the poppy, and I thought not knowing the part of the flower, nor which flower is actually was was pretty shocking, so I looked up, and scanned this in :-

And according to this (which is page 24 of "Beautiful Botanicals - Painting and drawing flowers and plants, Bente Starke King, North Light Books), on the rose, that part is identified as an ovary.

I'm thinking of adding a few little leaves to the poppy's base, (some 'bracts' like iris have) or just a bit further along the stem, since the rest of the curlique surrounding it looks a bit empty. This is the 'design on the go' after the change in the design from losing the sequins, so I'm kind of playing as I go along.

Once again, it currently looks very black, because of the marking up with pen.

There is one last large curlique to go into the top right hand corner curled in the opposite direction to the large curlique at the top left. It's marked in chalk but not very visible.

I will also be adding several small curliques to the gold stem overall.

I can't do any more outline couching or anymore of the border for a bit because I'm out of the gold DMC metallic stranded thread. I didn't know which thread it was until Mary of NeedleNThread was kind enough to identify it for me.

I know that I'm getting towards the end when I can identify the remaining tasks.

I'm going to add some buttonhole couching to the inner edge of the border, to give it a bit of a frilly look, to add interest. Well - take the idea from the buttonhole couching stitch, and add some buttonhole stitches along the edge of the already couched down threads. I don't think I could have coped with ctontrolling several threads to couch and buttonhole simultaneously anyway.

I had another flower or leaf (probably a flower) to add to that top right hand curlique. I was going to do a poppy bud, but I think having 3 cross hatched ovaries all up at the top of the design might be a bit much.

And I'm going to use those sequins that I found in the op shop - sprinking them around the background. I probably won't have enough to do the same on the 'back' cover, but I might as well use them and use them for one of the covers. It is in the "satin and spangle" style of bookcovers after all.