New Goldwork project

It started with a sprinkle of flowers...

I have been tinkering away on a new class project. The group in Bangkok have asked for something with pretty flowers that uses purls and spangles. Sometimes I just go straight to the finished design, but with this one, I felt I needed to play around with a few ideas first.
I had toyed with the idea of doing something delicate and dainty, which is why I chose a pastel coloured silk for the sampler...

I like my goldwork to be rich and lush, so the background fabric was quickly replaced with a much darker shade of teal-blue that I really makes the sparkle of the gold and shades of pink silk thread 'sing'.

The top part of the wing, is a stitched with pink glass seed beads with fine smooth purl curved around each bead. I wanted to make sure the shade of pink was not distorted by the blue fabric, which is why I had applied a piece of ivory cotton to that section to begin with.

I admit the top of the wing was a little fiddly but result, I think, well worth the effort.

The bird is only missing her legs.. I can't do them until the little tree she is perched on is finished. (Sorry about the terrible photo).
I am going to be away next week and would like to have the embroidery for this project finished before I go. So - back to the hoop...

Best stitches,
Anna x