The final work

Here's how the latest prayer shawl, "Tree of Life," looked today at the end of church. My dear friend Anne is holding it up for me -- I was too short to hold it for anyone else to get a full shot of it.

I added a few more details to it late last night. I decided it needed a dove, so I made one. It really does look more like a bird in person because you can see the three-dimensional wings -- they don't cause enough of a shadow in photos to give you the necessary detail.

I also added more flowers along the bottom which helped me hide some adjustments I made around the "roots" area to try to straighten things up a bit. I also went back over parts of some branches to adjust the shading -- what I had hoped would look like shadowing before just looked stupid. I like it much better now. (That's what duplicate stitching can do for a piece.)

Let's see, what else... Oh yes, I did not want to put a fringe on this piece. And customarily the congregation has participated by tying knots in the fringes. To compensate for that, I put strands of yellow yarn in the centers of the flowers so people would have something to tie. And I left some "stems" on some of the flowers for more tying purposes. A good trim of the loose ends will neaten everything up.

So it is now done and out of my hands. On to the next project -- I think I'll go back to a couple of straightforward, simple prayer shawls for a while instead of competing with myself for "fancy" stuff. I was just inspired to create this design for the particular recipient.