Why doesn’t Walmart sell embroidery floss? The one near my house sells a huge variety of crochet thread (which I find pretty useful for embroidering actually) but they don’t have a single color of embroidery floss.

I stopped by there today in the hopes of finding something champagne-colored to use to sew the leaf trim onto the actual fabric. I debated getting a generic cream-colored one but ended up grabbing one that had a strand of bright gold woven in. I figured it was small enough to be subtle but the shininess would make it go better with the leaves. So far, so good!

Next I’m going to chain-stitch the stem bits for the fan-like flowers, and I have some raffia straw that I’m going to fan out and sew down. The picture up there is one side of the sleeve. I’m using a diagram from www.costumersguide.com as a reference for the actual design of the leaves, but since the original fabric was already embroidered with the leaf design repeating along it, and the sleeves were cut out of that fabric, I’m just going to do one segment of the design on either side of the sleeve.

I also ran out of the blue-ish ribbon/lace trim I made so I’ll have to make enough to go around each sleeve.

I have a feeling I’m going to harbor a deep hatred for foliage when I’ve finished with the leaf embroidering on the whole dress, seeing as how there’s quite a bit of it to be done..

=====

Ok, it’s now 1:49am and I should probably do that thing where I become unconscious for a bit.

Especially since I literally spent 10.5 of my 14 waking hours today on this sleeve. Pretty though! On the right is a reference image of what the actual sleeve looks like. Again, forgive my crappy photo. I’m still using Photo Booth until my sister gets back so I can steal borrow her camera.

And yes, this leafy/fan pattern is kind of a bitch. In a therapeutic way.

Also, for the record, that gold/cream crochet thread I bought makes a lovely effect with the leaf trim but is oh-so obnoxious to sew with, as the gold bits like to unravel from the rest of it and create all matter of mess and entanglement. Something to keep in mind for next time.