Angel progress: a head-and-shoulders shot

The angel now  has a hairdo and eyebrows, stitched with one strand of Silk & Ivory "Chocolate."  The hair was worked in a satin stitch in sections, following the painted shading to establish the contours.  I think she looks a little like a young Brooke Shields--not a bad thing at all!  The flowers in the garland will be stitched at a much later date, when I've finished the rest of the top half of the canvas and I can turn it right-side up once and for all.

With that much done, it was executive decision time--what thread to use for the dress.  I'm feeling particularly frugal these days--you would, too, if you had to pay a hefty corporate excise tax at the end of the year for the privilege of doing business in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  All the threads I've used so far have been from my stash, so I decided to use DMC cotton floss for the dress. 

What shade of red to choose was another story!  Funny how people can have strong likes and dislikes about color.  Red is a festive color and I like it a lot, but I really dislike combining an orange-red with pink roses.  And being as fond as I am of pink roses, the shade of red with which the dress was painted had to go.  I do like the combination of pink with a cranberry red, however, so the predominant red is being stitched with DMC floss #304.  I also decided to simplify the shading for the folds of the dress, stitching it in one color--DMC floss #815--instead of two as painted, and skipping over some of the fold lines to make the dress look a little less busy.  If you click to enlarge the photo, you'll see the faint shadow of the darker lines showing through the stitched areas, like the "fugitive" paints on an oil canvas.