Posey Casket Toy- Finished (I think)

I think I have finished the Posey Casket Toy from the Tricia Nguyen workshop I took at the Winterthur Needlework Conference.  I love the sculptural aspect of these casket toys.  I love the fiddliness of them and the challenge!  Really it has inspired so many ideas I want to try that I want to move on to those! 

 When I did the second flower, I thought it would be interesting to try to cover the center with French knots.  I started with the same silk covered cotton form as the first flower and then added lots of french knots when I attached the center to the flower.  I think it needs some refining, but I'm quite fond of the texture it gives the center.  I'm looking forward to experimenting with this more in the future!

 I tried the bullion knot seeds again on the second strawberry!  They seemed to come out better than on the first one.  The trickiest part of the bullion knots seeds is taking care of the Soie Ovale thread.  It likes to catch on everything that has any kind of texture (including finger prints). 

 Something that caught me by surprise with this exercise is that I found the flowers and the strawberries lots of fun and the leaves very tricky.  I kept getting very annoyed at the shape of the leaf distorting or just not being as "leafy" as I wanted.  Finally by the last leaf I completed, I realized that I was starting with too short of a first turn which meant that the leaf quickly went too straight with the subsequent rows (you can see it in the bottom leaf in the photo below). 

Finally, I found a sharp, sharp needle completely mandatory for working with the Soie Ovale and the silk braids.  I could actually hear a certain squeaky noise when the needle would start to dull and then it would start to catch on the silk braids, damaging the integrity of the thread and silk of the braid.