Dragon, take 42--no wait, that's the meaning of life, the universe...

First, Rachel and RogerBW, thank you for your kind comments. Also for your excellent suggestions. I think I am going to take part of one of Rachel's for the scales, I am going to do layered split stitch (I think that is the one) where you do straight stitches very close together--it isn't satin stitch, which I had pondered but rejected as too smooth, and I learned it doing a very pretty Rowandean kit of a black cat--I really liked how you can curve the stitches around and do very pretty contouring. I am going to use the three colors of silk, layering them from dark to light, and the rust/brown/orange metallic ribbon, which will go on last in fly stitch. I really liked that idea for showing the scales.

Here is the dragon's pearl, as far as I have stitched it. I plan to use some of the metallic and the overdyed silk to do a couched trellis over it.

 I did a padded satin stitch over felt padding. Here is a picture of the partial first layer of satin stitching showing the felt padding underneath.

 I finished the wings finally. I didn't use wire for the second wing, as I am going to tack it down to the ground fabric rather than have it sticking out. I wanted both wings to look the same however, so I backstitched around the wing shape and then whip stitched the same as I did for the wired wing.

 This is the wired wing, with the whip stitch done. I still want to add some veining to the wing, probably with the aforementioned metallic.

Here are both wings with the whip stitch finished. The sparkliness of the base fabrics really shows in the picture.

 I decided to backstitch around the body of the dragon so that I would have an idea of where I was going, and partly to fill time while I noodled around with what I was going to do next.

And finally, here is is with his body backstitched in. I think he is a happy dragon. Maybe someone is going to play ball with him...

In other news, my daughter finally wheedled me into driving her to the local pet shop so that she could acquire her own dragon, of the Australian bearded variety. Her name is Calypso, and I'm pretty sure that pictures of her will probably show up here from time to time. She has settled into her new home very happily, and loves to chase down and eat crickets and mealworms. Not that she has to chase the worms as they just squirm in her food bowl.

THE Magpie.