The Accidental Embroiderer

Finishing off the Big Cats

First of all, I owe heartfelt thanks to all those people who responded to my request for ideas of how to finish off the Parliament of Birds that I posted last week. So many fantastic and original ideas! I am now seriously thinking of maybe doing more than one additional bird panel just to make use of all the possible ways to finish it. So - THANK YOU!

But now back to the Big Cats panel, and to the final two designs, which are a lion and a lioness

 

The Lion

 

and his Lioness

And here is the final version of the panel stitched together, with a couple of small  twigs of greenery to make the shape into a regular rectangle.

 

After looking at if for some time, I'm beginning to wonder if I shouldn't have made the backgrounds brighter in some ways. But it's subtle as it is, so I'll leave it. So that's finished. On to something new!

A mystery from the past

Several years ago I had an idea for a panel with a lot of different birds. They were all to be done in a realistic style, and the whole panel was to be quite large. Well, I digitised a big collection of birds, and stitched them out together. The panel was to be called "The Parliament of the Birds" and it was almost finished. But then I got called away on another job, and totally forgot about the Parliament, which got stuffed into a box somewhere. I found it again during a recent clear-out, but the only problem was that for the life of me I can't remember what was supposed to go in the centre of the ring of birds. Some insects, maybe, for them all to eat? Some chicks? Another bird who would be the Chairman of the Parliament?

The Parliament without a middle

This is a big project, and I don't want to throw it away without making at least some effort to finish it. So does anybody have any ideas about what they're all so interested in? I would be VERY grateful for some ideas!

More Big Cats

A couple of weeks ago I posted the picture of a tiger that was going to feature on a Big Cats panel that I was making as a commission. Here are two more of the cats, a cheetah and a leopard

 

The spotty cheetah

 

The spotty leopard

The most interesting problem that these cats presented was how to make the spots. It's not practical to make embroidered spots - there would be way too many jump stitches. So I just painted some fabric with the right kinds of spots (different for the cheetah and the leopard), used the fabric as applique, and stitched over it with a very light density of overstitching. Again, as with the tiger, there are no heavy satin stitch borders to these animals - it just wouldn't be appropriate. The overstitching does blur the underlying painted spots, but that just makes it look a little more natural. And if there are a few stray threads escaping the edges of the applique fabric, well, they are furry animals after all, so you expect a few loose hairs!!