Next I added flower stems. I auditioned a few different ways to add stems to the flowers, including novelty yarn, ribbon, perle cotton, and fabric. In the end I opted to machine stitch with a heavy weight thread and I stitched each stem line three times. I wanted thin stems as that was my original vision from my sketch.
Here it is laying on my studio floor. As you can see I'm in the process of hand stitching the binding on.
I did add a few painted highlights and shading but decided to do so sparingly. If you look in the photo above you can see that I've shaded the area straight up from the feet, to indicate the shadow between their legs. I also did some shading on the feet, neck, face, and flowers. Here are some detail shots:
