The Accidental Embroiderer

Some more little furry animals

Now that I've worked out the way to give embroidery the appearance of fur by sketching over appliqueed fabric I don't seem to be able to stop designing things that make use of the technique.  Here's another one which makes use of the method to give a nice furry appearance

We have a lot of red squirrels around us, which is very nice as they're not all that common in the UK. But they come all the time to raid our bird feeders and we're always glad to see them. 

 

Two squirrels on a tree

 

You can't really see the details clearly on this final version with the painted background, so here's a test stitch out of one squirrel which perhaps shows the textured fur a little more clearly

 

The test squirrel.  But is he the right colour?

 

There is one problem, however, with stitching a design that is supposed to be quite realistic, and that's getting the colour right.I have a collection of many hundreds of different threads in many hundreds of different colours, but all the same I found it difficult to find threads for these squirrels that were exactly right. A colour might look OK on a chart, or even on the spool, but for some reason once you have something stitched out, the colour isn't necessarily QUITE right, and that's what I found with these. Oh well, I'll just call it an "artistic interpretation" and let it go at that

Back to the browns

OK, I have to put some more effort into pieces for the show, which usually means more complex and less decorative designs - things which you have to look at for some time to be able to "see", rather than designs which you can appreciate quickly. This is a scene which I picked up from our garden, where a wind was blowing a willow sideways and a flock of sparrows was trying to hang in there in spite of the wind. I know that sparrows are often thought of as common birds but I love them - when we lived in London they were about the only kind of wildlife that visited our house, and I still appreciate their noisy company in the garden

 

Sparrows in the willows

But to be honest I'm not sure about it. It's a nice enough image, and one with birds that I like, but it's not what you could call madly exciting. Still I think it will show up well at the exhibition, and I'll be interested to see what sort of comments it gets

Something way over the top

For the past few weeks I've been spending all my time working on very serious, very worthwhile pieces to show at the upcoming NEOS exhibition. And I'm getting a little tired of all those brown and grey animals and faded green leafy backgrounds, so I decided to break loose and do something really colourful and abandoned, but something which I could still use for the exhibition. So I modified an old design by adding lots of leafy fronds, painting a bright background and then stitching it out

 

Eighty-four colour changes!

It took me three solid hours and there were EIGHTY-FOUR colour changes in it, but it did make a change from all the sober wildlife portraits, and I hope will add some colour to my exhibition

A little freebie for a little bag

The other day I was sorting through my (huge) collection of stitchouts and old projects, when I came across this little bag, which I made when I thought I might try sewing things for craft shows. However I quickly realised that my talents lay in other directions, so I put this little bag aside. But the design is nice, and it does go well with the small bag, so perhaps it might be of use to someone. It's for the 4 x 4 inch (100 mm x 100mm) hoop and it's just embroidery with no appliqué

 

Destined for the craft show, but disappointed

 

Now - warning! I'm having some problems with my PEDesign software - it seems to be refusing to convert from pes v.11 (which is what I work in) to pes v.6, which is what most blog readers can use. I think the v.6 version I'm posting is OK, but if you see any problems with it, PLEASE send me a comment saying so and I'll try something different. Technology, eh! You love it and you hate it (well, I do anyway!)

Oh - nearly forget the design. Here is is, in .pes v.6 (I hope!)