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This Seems Suspiciously Fast

A piece of dark brown silk in a wooden embroidery hoop, with turquoise and yellow basted guidelines, two parallel rows of gold chain stitch, and two partial rows just inside the first pair. A packet of Reeses, a large pair of sewing shears, and a long wooden spool of gold thread are scattered on the table around the embroidery hoop.
With the Fuel of the Gods in a cameo appearance.
Five days ago, I started on the real embroidery, after some drama with washing and cutting the muslin backing for the silk (this silk is far too thin to stand up to repeated hoopings without stretching out of recognition, so the muslin should help stabilize it). At the very top and right edges of this photo, and below the second band of trim, you can just see the bright yellow tacking stitches holding the muslin where it belongs. I ended up pulling those stitches out once I'd finished a few rows of embroidery; there's always a risk of the layers getting mismatched, and leaving at least one edge free to shift helps mitigate that.

Anyway, the embroidery! I used two needles at once, working simultaneously on the top- and bottom-most lines of chain stitch before going back to add the inner borders. Saves me hooping everything ten thousand times. Instead it'll be about five thousand times.

A piece of dark brown silk laid out on a table, with a pair of doubled gold chain stitch lines running along the top edge and a pink tape measure laid out beneath the top set of lines. Vertical chalk marks fill the space between the lines. A folded scrap of olive-green silk with gold scrolling oak leaf embroidery bordered with narrow diamond bands, a long wooden spool of gold thread, and a rectangular piece of tailor's chalk are roughly lined up on the bottom half of the brown silk.
Here you can see the contrast between the dress fabric and the trim; all colors are pretty true here.
At the top here, I'm chalking intervals for the diamond borders. I can do about 18-20 inches at a time on this fabric; it's so smooth-surfaced that anything more rubs away before I get to it. Just like before, I used two needles to save a bit of setup time—moving the hoop eats a surprising amount of work time.

A long piece of dark brown silk, laid out in loose folds along a table, with turquoise and yellow basted guidelines running down the length, and a pair of doubled gold chain stitch lines, each with closely spaced diagonals between them.
I was kind of tempted to leave it at this stage. Those candy stripe diagonals are really satisfying.
It is extremely difficult, as a short person, to fit the entire two yards of trim into a single photo, but I tried.

Dark brown silk stretched in a wooden embroidery hoop, with a pair of doubled gold chain stitch lines flanked by basted turquoise guidelines. The doubled lines are connected by diagonal gold stitches, and starting to be crossed into exes, with long coils of thread spooled on top of the work.
Onwards!
No more chalking needed, and you can see the marks have almost rubbed away already. I also need to remember to have a bit of extra backing fabric next time I do something like this; working right up to a corner is very difficult when your hoop is circular.

Dark brown silk stretched in a wooden embroidery hoop, with two narrow bands of diamond stitches bordered with chain stitch lines, and French knots starting back down the rows of diamonds.
Bonus dots at the far end of the trim!
When I reached the left end of the fabric, I worked backwards with the remaining thread; no need to tie it off and restart at the beginning when I was already in position to do a little of the next step. I forgot to take a photo of the finished dots and tacks pass, so this will have to do for now. Next up: vining!

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