Silver Swirls Progress

I set aside my Chinese Flower Project for a few hours so I could work on Silver Swirls, my project from the RSN. I've never really worked a real goldwork project before. Oh, I've couched some passing thread and interlaced some chain stitches with gold thread, but never worked with pearl purl or bright check, so this class is really giving me some great experience handling these new materials in a fairly simple project. In this photo I've finished the green shading, added the bright check and am now couching down the silver plated No. 1 pearl purl on the large swirl. I mentioned in the previous post that we were instructed to work the green part of the swirl with two strands of DMC. This just drove me crazy, so I added the darkest shade with just one strand. I feel so much better now...

Here I have added the No. 1 pearl purl and stitched it completely in place. Now all that's left to do is to add wrapped super pearl purl to the inside of the large swirl and cover up the padded section with beads and bright check. It looks as though there will be a lot of materials left over, so I'm trying to decide what I can add to complement the design. Ugh, this is the painful part for me. Maybe a nice border?

It is late at night and I'm the only one up in the house, and only because I forgot to do my laundry and really need to do so before setting off to work in the morning. I'm sure you are all saying, how do you figure that 9:30 is late? But when you wake at 5 am it is pretty late. So I'm off to bed shortly, but it certainly is nice having a quiet house to oneself. If I could only stay awake long enough to enjoy it.

Have a good, productive, stitching week!