I tried using the order of stitching that she explained and found I preferred it. I enjoyed a better rhythm in my stitching and doing the whole motif in one go rather than returning to do the grasses felt right. I also had shorter jumps across the back of the work.
Mind you, as Susan said, if I'd wanted to do the grasses in a contrasting colour it would have been better to use the original order of stitching.
If you have done this dragonfly over blowing grasses piece I would love to hear how you got on. Susan Fletcher is planning to offer two more dragonfly designs in the near future. Will you be using them all together in a quilt or are you making a set of table mats (there are instructions in her tutorial newsletter for this), or do you have other plans for your sashiko dragonflies?
I hardly dare post a picture of my finished piece. I realised that my dragonfly would be facing the opposite way to Susan Fletcher's original design unless I transferred the image to the "sticky" side of the vilene and decided that I was quite happy with that. What didn't occur to me at all was that the grasses would be blowing in the wrong direction.
Now I'm going to point out that the prevailing winds in Lincolnshire blow from a different direction from those in Japan (probably) and therefore my nowaki are giving my sashiko a locational reference. Hmm, what do you think?
