I did manage to complete the embroidery on the initial, and even stitched the vines in whipped running stitch. So that's progress, at least.
But it is the flowers that have me stumped. The kit came with lengths of Gumnut Stars Silk Floss in Pale #010, Medium #013 and Dark #016, all of them in the Watermelon line. They look lovely, but I ran out of the floss as I wanted to make quite a few more flowers than I had floss.
This one is made with the Pale and Medium shades, and I think is pretty quite nice, although it could use a bit more filling, which I will add eventually. I did save enough of the floss for that.
The flower on the left is made with Pale and Dark shades, and I'm not sure I like it very much at all. But what really bothers me are the buds, the little heart shaped pieces to the right of the flower. They are made with Madeira stranded silk floss in shade 504. I don't think that this shade of pink matches the Gumnuts shades at all, which has a bit of peachy shade in it.
And here is a flower made with Madeira stranded silk in 2404 beige, and 504 dark pink as shown in the buds above. I don't like it at all, as there is too much contrast between the beige and the dark pink. This will be a flower to stack under another, smaller, flower to hide the contrast a bit.
Just as I was giving up for the night I rummaged around in my silk floss box and found a lighter pink, No. 502, which I think will be a nice transition between the beige and the dark pink. I hope to stitch a few flowers using it and maybe shading it a bit with the darker pink. But even with this lighter shade of pink the flowers stitched with the Madeira silk still don't match those stitched with the Gumnuts Stars. I mentioned before that I plan on making two initials, one for me and one for the lovely granddaughter, so this will give me the opportunity to separate the flowers made from the two brands of threads. Please bear in mind that the differences in shades are only due to what happened to be in the kit and what I have on hand. Gumnuts Stars come in many different colors, some of which may match the Madeira very well. In fact, it looks as though the Sweet Pea group may match what I have just fine, but I don't happen to have them. But luckily for me, on Friday I can zip up to Needlepoints, Ltd in Garden Grove, only 25 miles away, which carries the most of the Gumnuts threads. And I can even visit my mom on the way!