Red bat - threads and the bat

With the bat design on the back of the fabric, I can start to stitch over it to mark it up on the front.  It's going to be in red, so I used a red sewing thread to stitch over the bat outline (and only the bat outline at this stage), so that I can stitch over it properly:

What I'm going to stitch over it with was a bit of a conundrum, though.  The background design is too small and detailed to make couching feasible, so Benton & Johnson metallic threads (the ones I used on the OBOD banner) weren't an option, and the Gutermann metallics I usually use for this sort of thing aren't available in red.

Time for some improvisation.

For the bat, I'm using two strands of Madeira stranded cotton no. 0211, a nice bright red, and two lengths of Gutermann Sulky machine embroidery thread no. 6014.  This is also red and quite sparkly, what the manufacturers evidently call 'holographic'.  The intention is to use all four lengths of thread in the needle at the same time.  I haven't done this before, so we'll see how well it works!