Fairy at the bottom of Belle's Garden

Here is the item I added to Belle's block :) There is a fairy hiding behind the variegated leaves. Not so easy to see in the photo but she is stitched in metallic threads so she is a little more visible to the naked eye.

I drew the fairy onto the block with a silver quilt marker pencil and embroidered her in silver, pink and gold metallic threads using stem stitch. The design was adapted from a stained glass window design I found by doing a google search for 'fairy'. The vine was embroidered in two strands of floss, again in stem stitch, over the top of the fairy. Then I added the leaves. I tried initially to do a leaf stitch, going back through the top of each stitch of ribbon, but the ribbon wouldn't slide through itself and kept pulling really tight so in the end I just stitched a running stitch for each leaf. The ribbon I used is not silk or satin but some man made fiber which I got as a mixed CQ baggie on eBay a while ago. It is lovely shades of green, blue and pink and I thought it would look well on Bell's block. One side of the ribbon was shiny and the other not. I had some problems keeping the shiny side up as it seemed to want to curl up and lie the otherside uppermost. In the end I gave up and went with the ribbon's wishes!

For a first attempt I am quite happy with it. I think the leaves and vine turned out well. The fairy could have been a little better drawn, maybe with a face? And also more delicate, so perhaps a backstitch or couching the threads would have been more appropriate.