The good news first: the first quarter of the border is finished. All finished. Both the silk work and the gold work are in place so it's possible to see the final effect of the silk and gold next to the panel of the cap. And I must say, it looks fabulous!The little red flowers were quite small to work and I used back stitch rather than split stitch to outline them. Back stitch is a bit tidier and easier to work on a shape this small. The blue flowers were pretty straight forward so all the remaining satin stitching went smoothly.However, I did work the gold and the final bit of silk in the wrong order. Usually I would finish all the silk work and then put the gold thread in last. Working the silk first and then the gold ensures the silk threads won't catch on the gold that's been fastened to the back after being couched down and plunged through. The ends of the gold thread are rough and often a thread gets caught on the end of a gold thread. Why did I do it in the wrong order? Well...one of my great ideas didn't look quite right so I had to adapt it.Initially I was going to work the bunches of grapes using tiny gold spangles and purple thread in those spaces at the end of the border section above. I planned to use three number 6 size spangles to make a tiny bunch of three grapes. Each spangle would be couched down with purple thread giving a glimpse of the grape color but really adding a bit of bling to the border of the cap. It's the same technique I used on the Bishop's Crook where it was really successful and looked great. Not so in this case, however.The spangles were too big, the colored thread looked weird and getting them in exactly the right place in such a small area was almost impossible. I'd done a little test on a scrap of fabric so I could see how it would look and it didn't take more than a split second to see it was a bad idea all round.Once that idea was scrapped, I reverted to what is a tried and true method of stitching grapes or berries - french knots. There are loads of french knot grapes in each bunch and they look delicious.As for the rest of the cap border, it went perfectly smoothly. Couching down the gold was a bit fiddly because there are lots of little short pieces.There are three more sections to stitch and then all of the stitching on the cap is finished. Watch this space...