In the last few months though I picked up stitching again with a fervor. I picked up a project I'd left half finished initially, another cross stitch cushion to fit in with my Bee and Lean on Me cushions. I still haven't finished it, but I will - eventually.
Then I suddenly had an urge to do a non-cross stitch project and was looking around for inspiration. The advantage of cross stich is that its very easy to find patterns, and no need to make transfers onto the fabric, so it's easy to pick up of an evening. Whilst I was reading through my various stitching books, inspiration struck. My grown-ups colouring book. Nice outlined pictures that would be easy to transfer onto some linen. After a few false starts with tissue paper and a transfer pen, I ended up just tracing the design straight onto the fabric.
No work in progress pictured, but this is the final piece. Its not designed to be anything in particular, just somewhere for me to practice.
The first bit I did was the large cream flower - and you can tell. The later bits are much better (practice, practice, practice). I used a mixture of Padded Satin stitch, Fishbone stitch and French Knots for this piece, and I initially planned to do all the elements in shades of cream - mostly because I had a ton of different shades of cream in my kit. That didn't last long as you can see.
The tulip type flower was next, the stem in Heavy Chain stitch, the leaves are Closed Cretan stitch and the petals are Closed Fly stitch.
Next up the satin stitched ladybird, which didn't come out terribly well. French Knots for the spots.
I am however very happy with the Silk Shaded butterfly - a zoom in below. It was a nice easy start as a first attempt at silk shading, and I think it turned out about as well as I could have hoped. The body of the butterfly is a Padded Satin Stitch to create some depth.
I'm also really pleased with the gradient on the petals of the other main flower:
OK, so the colours are a bit odd (yellow, cream and pink shaded petals...hmm) but I'm chuffed with the Padded Satin stitch result and the gradient on the top petals. The yellow petals are Long and Short Stain stitch and the leaves are Fishbone again.
The rest of the elements are mixtures of long and short stitch and satin stitches.
Overall, given this was a piece I picked up and put down over a few weeks with no real plan other then getting some practice in, I'm pleased with the result. I learnt a lot doing it, including that I need to get better at transferring designs if I want to get a decent amount of embroidery done, but mostly I learnt that I'm not too bad for a mostly self taught embroiderer. Also stitch bibles are great but some of the descriptions are a little vague, so YouTube is also super helpful, especially for stem type stitches.
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