The Peach and the Plum

The Peach and The Plum

Once Cha's fruit stems were finished, I started work on the peach and plum.  These are beautifully painted and I wanted light coverage stitches to show off the shading.  I also wanted to use more round or oval stitches.  After all, both fruit are rounded and using similar stitches to the ones on the leaves and flower petals will help unify the various areas of this design.

I decided on Small Balloon Stitch, which I found in Brenda Hart's Favorite Stitches (page 11).  Here is what it looks like.

Brenda Hart's Small Balloon Stitch

This stitch is small in scale, perfect for the peach and plum which are much smaller than the parrot.  I started with the left side of the peach and worked it to the right, switching colors from hot pink to pink to peach and goldenrod.  There is a white highlight painted on the peach which I stitched with a thin pink metallic.  I only used one ply of my threads, so that most of the shading shows.

Then I switched to the plum and worked it left to right in the same way, except I used one ply of three shades of purple.  In this case the highlight is a light purple color.  Did you notice the one blue stitch at the bottom of one Small Balloon Stitch in the stitched sample above?  Brenda Hart recommends putting a metallic stitch at the top and bottom of the long pairs of stitches in the center of one complete Small Balloon Stitch.  I added these two horizontal stitches using purple Accentuate just in the highlight area.  The rest of the plum doesn't have metallic accents.

I doubt you can see the metallic pinks and purples in the peach and plum but in person they add a lot to this piece.

Next time I'll talk about the cluster of wild grapes.  By the way, I finished another leaf and a half last night, which means I have five leaves to go.  I also stitched a leaf vein, to see if the thread and stitch I'd chosen work.  But more about that once I finish explaining the fruit cluster.

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow