SAL: next pair of leaves

Back to the Mountmellick embroidery stitch along today, where we are moving on to the pair of leaves above the main lily flower.

Straight away my mind said “it needs to be satin stitch”. This is the classic way to work a leaf like this, with the wide outline worked in satin stitch. I would like to make it very smooth, so rather than padding (which you could also stitch smoothly over) I’ve decided to leave it unpadded so that it can be flat-smooth.

Now, with our buttonhole stitch around the edge of the petals of the main lily, we tried to stitch so that our stitches were perpendicular to the outlines. But as you’ll notice, these leaves have a little bit jutting into the leaf which is very angled. If we kept our stitches perpendicular to the edges of the outlines, we’d end up with a strangely stitched part for the little bit that juts in.

Instead, it makes sense to work on an angle, so that the satin stitches are worked along the angle of the jutting bit. And it also makes sense to start at that part of the outline so that we start with that angle as a guide.
I like to work coming up on the far side of my satin stitch, inserting my needle on the nearer side. I don’t know why, but I just feel that it gives me a better result. If you prefer to do the opposite, that’s fine with me!

So I’m starting off at the edge of the leaf, preparing to work a stitch that will lay down the edge of the bit that juts into the leaf.

You can also see my running stitch within the stitching area, that I am using to anchor my thread. I’ll stitch over the top of this as I work.
Now I insert the needle on the close side of the outline.
I’ve worked a few more stitches, continuing with the same or similar angle for the stitches.
At the corner I need to work a number of stitches, splaying out to fill the sharp corner at the leaf tip. At the inside edge of this corner the stitches are crammed in very tight, while at the outside edge they are very widely spaced.
Working down the other side of the leaf, I have turned the work so that I can still stitch from the far side to the near side.

As I stitched down this side, I was having trouble getting the angle right. You can see that I have taken out some of the stitches, and drawn in pencil guides to help me get my angle right. As long as these will be covered over (which they will be!), there is no shame in having extra guides to help you. Why make the job any harder than it needs to be, when it could be so much easier with a few little helps?!
Continuing further down the leaf, I have drawn more guides in because I found them so helpful.
After stitching down to the stem, I then stitched up the left-hand side of the leaf to meet the beginning of the stitching.

I’m actually not entirely happy with it. I don’t really like the angle of the stitches on the left side of the leaf, below the jutting bit. They don’t sit well. Maybe I’ll take them out, but maybe I’ll just leave it there, remembering the big picture, rather than the tiny details.

Something to take note of: As No 3 Mountmellick thread has 6 ply, it can become very obvious when the amount of twist changes from stitch to stitch. Try to keep the thread evenly twisted throughout the stitching. If this means that you have to manually retwist the thread before taking each stitch, then do it! If it means untwisting it a little, then do that! You are the mistress/master of the thread, so make it do what you want it to!