Now I've almost finished the right bud I've turned my attention to the actual iris, and had to deal with a problem that's been bothering me for ages.

Looking at centre of the original design, there's a hooded thing, with the iris beard emerging at the bottom. The centre and most of the right of the hood is hidden by a petal emerging from the middle of the centre.

Believe me, I've spent hours staring at this, and just can't make sense of it. Not of that petal emerging from the hood.

I don't know if I'm not seeing the design correctly. Especially since the stitch direction lines on the black and white version of the design didn't seem to match up.

I looked at lots of pictures of bearded iris's yesterday and I've just made some design changes.
They make sense to me, and I need to understand what I'm stitching if it's going to work.

I've done the hood in entirety, and have that petal rising up behind it.
I've also extended the petal on the right a bit, to go behind the hood.
I just did the hood with waffly edges, and uneven sides, with the beard coming out of the middle.

There's a bit of smudged pink around because I started with tailor's chalk but I couldn't draw clearly enough with it, so I switched to pen (!). There are a couple of corrections there, but I know how it's supposed to go.

I'll have to alter the shading a bit as well.

If anyone can understand the original, do tell. Then I'll scream - but it'll be a bit late.

Now to finish the right bud - I've just got a line of highlighting to do.