Goldwork design from Wells Cathedral

When we were in England at Easter we visited Wells Cathedral. What a magnificent place! Naturally we took loads of photos and one of them was a photo of this inlaid brass bishop's crook.This is the design I'm using for my goldwork piece at the RSN Goldwork course.The leaf in the center and the curved crook will be padded with felt underneath the goldwork. This means that it's necessary to first make a paper pattern of both shapes.Cutting out the crook was straightforward and didn't take long. Cutting out the leaf took forever! So many little points to make pointy and curves to make curvy. It's a good exercise to prepare for the stitching, though, since I get to know the shape as I'm cutting it out. I'm thinking of all the very tight turns I'll need to make or the ends I'll need to get right to maintain the sharp points on the leaf tips.The veins in the leaf will be left without any stitching so the green silk will show through. Again, lots of very fine little tips to make sharp and crisp.Below, you can see the green silk stitched onto the calico or muslin backing. Before attaching the silk to the muslin, it's pinned using straight pins stuck straight through the fabric, as you see the pin above holding the paper leaf to the fabric. Pins are stuck through both fabrics all around the edge and then the silk is stitched onto the muslin using alternately longer and shorter straight stitches. I began stitching from the center of the bottom to one corner and then to the other corner. Then from the center of the top to one corner and the other and finally from the center of each side outwards to each corner.The silk is attached to the calico while it is still slightlz slack on the frame. Once the silk is stitched onto the muslin only then is the frame tightened so that both pieces of fabric are pulled tight.To get a glimpse of how it will look when I'm farther on in the process, I laid the two large paper patterns on the silk. The next step is to prick the pattern and, using pounce, transfer the pattern to the silk.Doing this little bit of prep. work will help me to get the goldwork finished in the 8 days of the course. It's quite an intense two weeks, with four days of class each week and a three day weekend in between to continue working. I would much prefer to be able to take one class a week over an 8 week period, but the commute from Berlin might be prohibitive!