April 2018 JE Report

Hi ! I hope you had a great time in March. 
Between studies and other things, I had a group meeting for Japanese Embroidery at the beginning of the month, and unfortunately i had to remove a lot of work. 

When i came to the meeting, it looked like this :

Where to begin ... 

First : Byebye Pinks. All of it.  As I understand, Japanese Embroidery has very strict rules, but you can do some variation of your own when you are more skilled. My pinks were not done the traditional way, I was very unhappy with how it looked (not the same as it should be), and a fellow stitcher suggested to remove it if not satisfied.

So i did it. I cut everything :( It was so sad at first, but i am okay with my decision. It's for the best.

Second : Byebye paper bag. Well, not all the stitches, but 75% of what i did. Problem is, I left a big space in the middle for cords. After discussions with other stitchers, stitching the cords on top of the bag is part of the exercise, and meant to be hard, because there will be a lot of surimposition in other phases. This one is just a practice.
So I did it, i removed the thread. Almost. All. Of. It. 
Catastrophe !!!

It was like this.

Then like this ( I want to cry ) .

Then throw away this unusable ORT's (SO MUCH THREAD... i am actually crying )

Fortunately, i could re-use a part of those threads, this time stitching the good direction : from left to right. (I was stitching the wrong way). So here is what a complete day of stitching looked like : a day of unstitching. Not a single new thread was added to my work. I was SO sad. The only time I had to sitch in one month was to remove ALL of the past work. 

I felt very crappy for some days. I was in mid semester time, had a lot of papers to submit for my Master then, and I was impatiently waiting for my stitching day to relax. Well...it never happened. I did what i had to do, then put my work in my case until i could find courage to redo everything. After 3 weeks, when i found time between my studies, I felt urge to stitch, so i put my frame on the stand, and went back to work. 
I could add a little 5 hours of stitching, so here is what it looks like as today.

I had to remove a little part on the middle, but it will be very fast to stitch. 

The big problem is, with this mistake of not doing the paperbag the good way at first, i had to throw away so much thread... now i don't have much left :

Eeeek ! I love to live dangerously.

Our next group meeting is at the end of April. I was given a goal, if possible : finish the paperbag (while finishing my Master courses :/ ). Since i still have brown to put on it, and so little left, I want to wait for the group discussion to not mess up more things and risking to not have enough if i still do mistakes. I will wait, and work on something else Knowing my friend Dima won't be here in April, I will probably be working on something else, and wait for her to comeback in May, so we could do this together. She also had to redo her paperbag and is also short on thread.
I suppose the best for me would be to finish the iris and chrysanthemum... ans those removed pinks.


Oh, and a i did had a little bit of green on a long leaf, but my little finger is telling me will have to remove it when the littles seeds on top will be stitched

Should i remove or not ? To be continued....

Then, this is what it looked like at the end. 

Well... almost. I didn't took a picture of the paperbag finished. Without the pinks, my embroidery looks so empty :(

Next month is another month. Things should go better by then. Never give up.

Happy stitching :)