Kate Knight cushion in The World of Cross Stitching 211

The latest issue of WOCS contains one of my works, the one I simply nicknamed `orange tree` - it might be the Tree of Life for all I know, I just went for the most obvious (it is stitched on a gorgeous, tangerine coloured fabric, maybe Lugana, as far as I remember, but I might be wrong there). As usual, this has been a while, too - actually, it kinda seemed to go on forever: not only because it wasn`t what you`d typically call a stitcher-friendly project (out of the 86 hours it took, I spent over forty just doing the backstitch, and most of this you won`t even notice, e.g. the fiddly individual petals on the 70-odd blue flowers and green leaves around the frame), but also because I started it before my 3-or-4-week summer holiday and finished it after we came back, so it seemed that I`d worked on it for months. :)

I have quite a few progress photos for this project but I`d like to apologise in advance for the quality of some of these. I must have taken them in the evenings, under a reading lamp, or maybe behind drawn curtains - I remember it was very hot when I was stitching this, so I frequently had to darken the room just so that it wouldn`t feel like an oven. Anyway, here they are:

Every journey begins with the first step: a tentative start on Day 1
(photo DEFINITELY taken in sunlight streaming in through window)

Still at the stage of figuring out the best way to go about this design :)

And the solution: stitch dark outlines of flowers as reference points
(plus all 3 shades of green for leaves, so no need to come back later)

Backstitch defining not only flowers and tree but wee birdies as well :)

The above-mentioned fiddly backstitch: one shade darker blue for the petals
and 2 different shades of green for the tiny leaves

And, finally, the finished product - gorgeous, even if I say so myself :)