Chinese Flower Project Lesson 3 Finished

I've redone the first two rows of stitching on the Chinese Flower Project using Anchor 101 on the large petal and I have to admit it's looking better. In my last post somehow I made the stitches two short and ended up with three rows to get the required depth. I didn't like the way they looked and ripped them all out.

In this photo you can see I've added two more shades, Anchor 6 and 9, and have blended it in carefully.

This shows the darkest shades, Anchor 10, 11 and 1025. I don't know how on earth our teacher, Trish Burr, manages to pick out these shade so well. I have trouble with color, but she can see them beautifully! All of the colors, from the lightest to the darkest, shade into each other so well.

I've added the stamens in 905 and completed the lower petal. Overall, it doesn't look too bad. My assessment came back saying that my first row, Anchor 1011, isn't as full as it could be, which gives me little pepper marks where I've pushed aside the threads to allow the needle through. If the threads were packed closer together, this wouldn't happen. This is usually caused by going down into the threads with the needle, instead of coming up through them, but I didn't do that. I fact, I was very careful to come up through the threads. So the solution seems to be to pack them in more tightly. If this sounds confusing, I'll try to photograph it while I'm stitching Lesson 4.