Using the pattern for this lovely stained glass dragon, (altho I accidentally flipped the pattern when I applied it), I embroidered a gym bag flap for my husband. I only used the lower half of the pattern, and I did make a couple of small changes because I was working with fabric & floss rather than glass. The two changes are: the small diamond on the lower point of the face mask (because I wanted to slightly shorten the length of the satin stitch there. The other change is at the end of tail, where I needed something that made sense to my eye when I changed the direction of the chain stitch used for the body & tail to simulate scales.
The brighter yellow areas around the head which form the dragon's face mask are done with padding under the satin stitch. I used an inexpensive (we don't want to say 'cheap', do we?) yellow felt that matched the shade of my floss. I wanted to create a bit of depth there, for several reasons. 1/visual interest, so everything isn't on the same plane. 2/some depth around the eye area, to help focus attention there. 3/I was bored with all the satin stitch, but still had to do more so I wanted *something* different!
