Tale of Two RRs

This is the final block I need to work on for the Fool's Goldwork RR hosted at CQI Yahoo Group. Wendy requested a peacock theme and so here's my peacock. I cut the peacock from gold ribbon, and padded it with felt. I then trimmed the body/feather with gold trim. Rest of body was stitched with 3 different gold threads.

Before I added the peacock I had embellished all the seams with treatments of white (or was it ecru?) perle #8. It would have bothered me if those seams were bare but I also didn't want them to detract from the peacock.  The bottom of the block has some other chicken peacock scratch stitched with various gold threads and beads. I added a butterfly also cut from gold colored organza ribbon and trimmed in gold threads to break up the white space but it occurred to me after I was finished that the butterfly is as big as the peacock and it reminded me of those old Japanese movies where two giant creatures fight each other. Who would win? Butterfly or peacock. Ah, my mind wanders...Anyway...when I thought I was finished I thought that dark brown triangle looked like a tumor protruding from Mr. Peacock so I think I toned it down with a trail of bullion roses made of 2 strands DMC and 1 strand gold DMC antique effects. Some of the leaves are stitched with DMC pearlescent and sparkle more than shown here.

I wasn't sure I would like the fool's goldwork because I'm not a gold/sparkly person; however, I have really enjoyed this, have a book on real goldwork to use for further ideas and have an entire tub of gold stuff I need to use up. So...maybe something will be in the works soon (or not).

Hosted on the CQ4Newbies Yahoo Group is a "Brown Color Study" RR. The block and all embellishments are supposed to be done in brown. Each lady sends her block around to others in their group to embellish and then eventually each block makes it's way back to each owner.

This is Toni's block and it had a lot of rectangular spaces. I find it difficult to stitch seams on blocks made in this style but look at each block as a challenge so..

Since it is hot here and I'm without A/C (I did go to work and experience some today, though) my thoughts of course led to fans. I embellished a long seam with my rendition of chain stitch/buttonhole fans with lazy daisy handles of variegated perle. Below that I added a variegated silk ribbon fan since I needed something to stand out on that striped brown.

Continuing on with fans...Toni's block had an Asian looking dragon in the fabric she used in the middle of the block So, I stitched an Asian lady with fan next to it. (Yes, that's supposed to be an Asian lady with fan and some bonsai in the background.) That's a stray thread near the bottom of the lady's kimono on the right. I think each of my pics has a stray thread somewhere. I also added a feather stitch/bullion seam between dragon and dragon  Asian lady.  Like the peacock block I used two strands of DMC plus one strand of antique effects brown metallic thread on the bullions. That's why they look kind of stripey. 

 And finally...I crocheted a little brown basket and added cast-on flowers/beads to it. And the seam above is satin ribbon, french knots and kiko flower stitches.

And here's what it looks like before it passes on to the next lady to stitch on (except I somehow managed to chop off some of the top half of the block in the photo.

Oh, one last thing...I'm not sure I showed MY brown color study block that is going around for the other ladies to embellish. I wonder what everyone will choose to do.