Machining the shapes

Now I'd proved to my own staisfaction that this 'shell' idea should work, I cut out the same shapes in felt (though missing out the biggest one this time):

For each one, I sandwiched it between a layer of cotton lawn, which will form the back and won't be seen, and a light blue silk dupion, that I already had in the cupboard:

I'm trying to do this project from stock, as it were, and not buy anything specially for it.  It'd probably be good to try and get some of my stash used up!

I stitched around the edge in small running stiches, just to hold it in place:

Then free machine stitched over the running stitches in a very close together zig-zag in a matching blue:

That's not terribly well done, I'm afraid.  I'm pretty out of practice for free machine embroidery, but never mind - the whole point of this project is to do something as utterly unlike the Banner as I can think of, so a more casual approach is good.  Or that's what I'm trying to tell myself, anyway!

Here's all of them done, still in their hoops, apart from one, as I only have two 12" hoops and would need three for this, so one had to be swapped over:

This was fun!  I used a free machine vermicelli stitch to fill in the shapes, trying not to make any points of overlaps:

I didn't entirely succeed, though I did enjoy myself!

All vermicellied:

I then stitched quite a lot more heavily over the top with a metallic silver thread:

That hasn't come out as clearly as I'd have liked in the photo, but it looks quite sparkly in real life.

Next, beads.