Chikan Embroidery - fourth lesson

I'm following a stitch-a-long with Anita from Artistic Fingers. I'm all caught up now because I am home nursing bronchitis which gives me lots of sewing time!  Always find a silver lining!  I'm enjoying Anita's excellent weekly tutorials and the motif is certainly coming to life.  It's 6" x 5" with a lot of tiny stitches.  

Chikan Embroidery - third lesson

I'm now working on the double back stitch.  That's the centre blue heart.  I chose the smallest piece first, there's lots more of that stitch to do.

Chikan Embroidery - first lesson

Almost finished the stitches for the first lesson.  With the magnifier my stitches are acceptable.  I'm finding it relaxing, and even the back is looking quite good.

Back side of work

The second lesson is already up on Anita's blog, Artistic Fingers.  I have her on my sidebar list of blogs. 

Chikan Embroidery

I'm taking part in Anita's stitchalong.  She's teaching a bunch of us an Indian embroidery style called Chikan embroidery.  Anita's blog is Artistic Fingers and is on my sidebar.

There are stitches at the back of the work that show through as a shadow.  I'm enjoying doing it, but have realized several things so far:

• I need better glasses!  Towards the end I used my lighted magnifier, and there is a great improvement. On the left side where the darker pink starts, I began using the magnifier. 
• Garbage in, garbage out, I think I remember that from computers.  And the same holds true here, do a good job of tracing the pattern and the little shapes will be more even when embroidered.