These are some really fantastic suggestions and I thank you all! And those that commiserated with me---I’ll love you forever!
I went back and took a long hard look at the pattern again. Keep in mind that I have to make 6 of these puppies so I made a template out of poster board. In the process of tracing the pattern from paper to poster board and from poster board to fusible webbing and then transferring that onto fabric and, finally, cutting it out, I noticed that the definition in the toes became much more pronounced than what it was in the pattern.
I re-templated, re-traced and re-cut with a softer swing in the toes and it worked so much better. The blanket stitch itself gave definition to the toes and that’s all that was really needed.
I learned lots of valuable lessons and got invaluable advice. You folks rock!