St Cuthbert's Banner - the final bit of embroidery

Well it's been a long time coming, but I have finally done the very last of the embroidery for the Banner.  As milestones along the way go, this is probably the biggest until I finish the whole piece.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.  Last time, I'd done the very last ferns (hooray!), so all that needed to be done was a few flower stems:

And a few more:

The group of wood avens at the end:

And the last few tendrils, completing the whole panel:

Finally, here it is with the grid removed:

And that's it - no more embroidery.  But coming next, is putting all the pieces together, to make the Banner itself.  This is the bit I've been working towards for months, so make sure you keep reading!

Goldwork stems and tendrils - left (and a bit)

Things are really coming along now, with most of the goldwork flower stems and tendrils done.  Here are the three ferns on the left (sorry about the slightly blurred photo):

Some wood avens and a pearlwort:

The rest  of the flowers:

And some extra tendrils:

Moving on, here's the central cowslip, with its stalks:

And the three ferns on the right:

The last of the ferns ever!  That counts as a red-letter day in its own right.

There really is very little to do now and all the embroidery will be finished.  After all this time, it hardly seems possible.

The rest of the goldwork edging

I can't believe it's been so long since I last posted - I hadn't realised it was such a long time ago.  Sorry about that!

But if I haven't been posting I have been stitching, and have finished edging all the flowers.  Another major milestone completed!

Last time, I'd finished all the flowers to the left of the cowslip, so next it was the cowslip itself:

Then the pearlworts:

The central wood avens:

A couple of ferns:

The remaining wood avens:

And their leaves:

And finally, the last ever fern!  I kept that one to the end on purpose.

So here's the panel, with all the edging done:

The only things left to do now are the stems and tendrils.  I can't believe how close to the end I now am!

Goldwork edging for the flowers

Or some of them, anyway.  As I was up the right-hand end of the panel anyway, I started the edging at that end.  There's no need to reorganise my seating arrangements if it's not strictly necessary!

So, working more or less in reverse order to how I stitched them on, here's the first fern with its edging done:

Then the little cluster of three wood avens flowers and their leaves:

The remaining wood avens and the pearlworts:

Then finally the next two ferns:

That's all the flowers on the right done, so almost half way through.