The Embroidery Obsession Continues...

...with the completion of the third kimono in the series, which I have dubbed "Purple Pinwheels."

So named because each of the spirals uses a shade of purple and another color, and of course because I crayon-tinted the background purple, or really, a strange hybrid of Wisteria, Purple Mountain's Majesty, and Plum.  Gotta love Crayola color names.

The elephant in the room: the border fabric is wrinkly.  I'd intended to use a light blue fabric to echo the two blue spirals, but the color just wasn't right.  While pawing though my scraps for alternatives, I found a long, long, wrinkly strip of fabric that was once the bottom of a tiered ruffle skirt that I decided to shorten.  I sliced off the gathered top seam and ironed the hell out of the strip, and this was the best I could manage.  The color was too perfect to pass up for a few wrinkles!

Now that that's out of the way, take a good look at the reason this kimono took me almost two weeks where the others both took only a few days:

Nothing but heavy chain stitch as far as the eye can see.  (Well, back stitch border as always, but that took me less than ten minutes, it doesn't count.)  And of course to get the spirals neat, I had to work both colors at the same time, as opposed to leaving a channel for the second one, which would have made working heavy chain stitch nearly impossible anyway.  I am officially insane now, I'm never ever doing a piece entirely in this stitch again.  Even though I really like the way it looks....

Kimono #4 is in the planning stages, but finding a complementary color palette that also meshes with a border fabric that I already have is proving problematic.  In the mean time, I'm working on finishing the needle book I started to give me some relief from the miles of heavy chain stitch, expect that one in the next few days!

Will I ever get back to my knitting again?  Who knows, stay tuned!