Embroidered Collage

I'm calling this piece Summer Sunshine for now and this is a link to a little larger image.  I had a horrible time trying to think of any sort of name and am not sure it will be keeping this one, but I had to pick something so I could enter it into the Fiber National exhibit along with Kambaba Jasper and I really didn't want to call it Footstep #4 or some such.  I bought a new staple gun yesterday morning, then mounted the canvas, photographed it, prepped the image, made the cd, filled out the application, and went to the post office to get the entry in before the postmark deadline.  Phew.

In order to push the composition to completion I added the large cross-stitches, keeping to the modified grid that the little squres lay on.  I chose the fibers to stretch the value range out, going darker on the green section and lighter on the yellow section.  Since all the little squares had beads, I put a bead at the center of each cross-stitch as an echo.  The beads were actually strung on during the stitching, not added later.  I'm not currently able to verbalize WHY this addition makes the piece complete for me.  Knowing that is not necessary to enjoy it, but it would be nice to know for future reference. 

If you missed the previous entries, this piece has been evolving from random little squares, to which I added stitching, created a background for them, tried out potential arrangements, then attached the squares.