A bit of embroidery and Regency plans

I am working on some costuming right now, unfortunately none of it is ready to be photographed yet.  Specifically, I am working on fixing up my stays for Regency styles and hopefully a new Regency outfit.  I love my stays, they are based on Sabine's amazing post on short stays Short Stays Studies. The stays went together really well, were really comfortable and looked great under my dress, until I had to drive in them.  Unfortunately while driving the sides tried to roll which caused the boning in the center front to dig in really really badly and the back to bow horribly.  The stays are so comfortable if you can sit up like a lady and so uncomfortable when driving.  I am the only driver in my household and very few of the locations I get to place dress up in have a space to change so I usually have to drive in my costumes.  I know short stays were supposed to be very minimally boned, but I just can't manage this with my modern driving way of life.  So I am adding cording and a bit more boning to try and rescue the stays since they were so comfortable and looked so good under my dress.  I will post more when I get a bit further.

In the mean time, I am actually working on some embroidery.  My husband needs a new pouch for his SCA garb, so I figured this is a great opportunity to practice some stitches I am rather incompetent at. I need practice in stem stitch and split stitch.  For some reason split stitch completely confounds me, but I figure practice makes perfect.  I outlined everything with stem stitch and I am filling in everything with split stitch.  Here is a shot of the completed outline and the start of the fill work. The ground fabric is a thin linen scrap I had laying around and the threads are all silk.