Practice embroidery
 

This is a design that I fell in love with and it's going on a quilt for a friend. I used a fat quarter that I didn't like because I didn't think the embroidery would turn our so well on my first attempt in over a year. These are not the real colors, but really close because I was afraid of running out of the colors it called for. I used only one layer of heavy weight tear away stabilizer, used a generous amount of starch and went so slowly that it took over 5 hours yesterday.
The real piece will get two layers of stabilizer to see if I can get rid of all the ripples at the edges. It's a very dense design (over 82,000 stitches) so I know some is inevitable but I'll try. I'm going to start it tomorrow morning. It's a design I found at Urban Threads and is called Lion in Flowers.
Please let me know if there are things to do to improve this.

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Took a look at this design on Urban threads. Oh my that is a beautiful design. Would love to see the one that you did!!!

Outstanding!

Oh, that's beautiful. He's so very regal looking. Makes me want to go out & buy an embroidery machine.

Very beautiful!

If that's a "practice", can't wait to see the "real" one!

I was told for a dense design to iron on Pellon Shape Flex on the back of your fabric and then use stabilizers as you planned. I haven’t tried it, but a friend of mine does a lot of dense designs and thinks it’s really great.

Here's a postscript...I hung the piece on my design wall with the intent of cutting out the design and saving it. The wrinkles are all gone. It's perfect! The only thing I can think of is that it was still slightly damp when I hung it up and as it dried the wrinkles went away. On a different note, the eyes follow you as you walk through the room. If anyone has an explanation of why the wrinkles went away, please chime in.

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Good job!!

I love it. He or she is beautiful. BrendaK