Little strawberries

I just love stitching strawberries. It's not difficult to do and they almost always look delicious when they're finished.This strawberry is worked in padded satin stitch using Pearsall's silk red # 360, gold passing thread #4 couched with Perasall's silk green # 221 over the top and the leaves are padded with silk and then satin stitched using Gilt Sylke Twist Greene.These are tiny strawberries: each strawberry is 3/8 inch/1 cm across.It took me a while to get the hang of satin stitch with GST. It's such an expensive thread that carrying each stitch under the shape as one usually does in satin stitch seems wasteful. The first thing I tried was bringing the thread up to the front right next to where it had gone down for the previous stitch. This worked, but not as well as I hoped. The stitches didn't lay flat and I couldn't pull them firmly enough to make them lay flat. So I decided to look for help on the internet.Of course, I found it on Mary Corbet's Needle 'N Thread. I won't explain what she did and found successful - you can read all about it here in wonderful detail. She did a variation on what I'd tried and her variation made all the difference - the stitches laid flat and looked great. Thank you Mary Corbet!I started this morning to work on the long, narrow leaves on either side of the blue flower. Then I discovered I was almost out of the green thread I needed so I had to stop and order more. The leaves will have to wait until I get the thread from Pearsall's Embroidery. Fortunately, their shipping is always fast!The Royal Persian Blossom project is calling me back and I am getting ready to be finished with both of the crewelwork projects as soon as I can manage it. I'm getting anxious to start doing some goldwork before I go to England for my course. Moving between crewel, silk and gold work is fun, but when I've been away from one technique for a while it always takes me a few days to get back into the swing of things.Do you work on projects that use different techniques at one time, rotating from one to the other? Or do you tend to do one technique for a while and then switch? How is it moving back and forth from one to the other? Leave a comment and let us know!