Celtic Wolf - WIP post 30

Sunday's progress can be seen above - I was *so* close to finishing the cheek area! Yesterday I was able to complete the stitching despite being ill. I then washed and gently pressed Wolf to get all the creases out from folding and pinning the excess fabric out of the way. Due to the amount of metallic thread I didn't press the embroidered part for very long and only on a really low heat with a pressing cloth, which wasn't enough to dry him out. As I can't move the hoop to cover areas that have been beaded I decided it was time to get out my old quilting hoop and see if that would be the right size for Wolf - it is, just - but it works. I pinned the corners that stuck out on the right out of the way to the back so I couldn't get the thread caught on them.

Because he was still rather on the damp side I waited till after dinner to start beading and then found out that what with my visual issues and the sparkliness of the beads I was unable to see the hole in the bead to stitch it down - the one bead you see took me a good 2-3 minutes to do, which isn't exactly speedy. It takes 2 stitches to balance the bead to point in the direction I want it to as I'm planning on letting the point of the bead follow the curve of the area. To start with I'll be using Kreinik Vatican gold cord as the thread for the beads, which will hopefully sparkle as much as the beads themselves, otherwise I'll give another thread a go.

These are the dragon scale beads - I have 3 different colours mixed together to make it more interesting to see when it's complete. I will be adding them completely randomly, even if this means having a group of the same together. The colours I'm using are: Crystal Copper Rainbow, Crystal Capri Gold and Crystal California Gold Rush.

Stitches done: 171

Beads done: 1

Total stitches:  13106
Total backstitches: 63.62 inches
Stitches left: 0

See you tomorrow with hopefully more beads attached!