If you haven’t claimed last week’s faux stained glass dragon embroidery pattern, no worries! You can still download the design here. Meanwhile, I threaded my darning needle and got to work on the design.

I’d initially planned to fill some of the larger areas with my punch needle, but ended up unravelling those bits. I just didn’t like the look of the punch needle stitches for this design.

So, I freehand embroidered it. There is no rhyme or reason to my method. I simply angled the thread in ways that pleased me in the moment.

As I mentioned in last week’s post, I was inspired by Tairn, but I didn’t want to colour block his body in solid black for this ‘stained glass’ design. For a ‘softer’ result, I used navy instead (though, if I had embroidery floss in Payne’s Grey, I’d have picked that).

Of course, now he looks like Sgaeyl, but that’s okay. Against the black background of the wall where he’s displayed, the navy seems darker than it truly is, so there’s still enough Tairn-ness there IMO.

If I could redo the design, I’d use dark greyish-brown thread for the outline instead, and I’d also double up the outer lines. I’m still happy with the result, though, and because I want to be authentic with you, I don’t want to hide the ‘trial and error’ of how I learn. Especially since ADHD brains tend to learn by doing, so there are many trials and many errors.

I forgot to take a picture of how I filled in the outlines with black—sorry. But I just used small, neat stitches for that. For the rest, as I said above, I freehanded the design. I picked a palette of soft blues, purples, and teals to imitate the sky, but the design would work with any palette.

Until next time.

Yolandie