Encrusted Calico - Woohoo it's finished!

Yep, done and dusted.  As I think I mentioned I spent a bit of time 'rounding' it up as the outer edge was looking a big weird.  But of course now it possibly looks like it should be a circle and its not.  And of course if you give that thought any credence I could be here for the rest of the year and to be honest I just don't have the fabric around the edge to do that.  I've already well and truly blown past my 10cm x 10cm border (4" x 4").

I'm pleased with the end result and to keep Hubby happy I'll find a frame and put it on the wall somewhere (behind a door or something haha).  I might type up a quick how-to at some point, put all my lessons learnt in one place, in case someone else like me is poking around the net looking for the same thing.  But I think before I do that I might do another one, not as big and actually covering a pebble/small stone seeing thats what started me down this route in the first place.  Will see what else there is to learn about actually covering a pebble, I did find some comments somewhere about the challenges of dealing with wrinkles in the fabric caused by both the lumpy bits and of course the wrapping around the pebble, so that'll be interesting.

Anyway, here is the finished result.  Its another grey, wet day here so you'll have to excuse the lighting, I did my best.

What Next?

So whats next?  Well I don't have a pebble just yet so thats out and I can't have nothing to do.  That'll just drive me potty.  I have had a fascination with Van Goghs Starry Night for quite a while, reckon it'd look great in thread and turns out someone beat me to it (not surprising).  But that doesn't mean its off the to-do list, just not right now.  

There is a lady in South Africa called Elza, not sure what her last name is.  Elza prints photos onto fabric and then embroiders the details.  For someone like me who can't paint, dye etc this sounds like a great idea.  So I think thats what I'm going to do next.  I've found my photo, I've printed it onto some 'ready to print' fabric which I haven't used before.  But we'll see how we go, its printed at 9cm wide by about 18 cm tall (3 1/2" x 7").  Here's the photo below (I have a fascination with trees believe it or not, not actually chickens haha).  Anyway based on the way Elza does her embroidery I will embroider the foreground tree, flowers, rocks etc but the print of the background stays untouched.  So you get to keep the depth of the photo I guess.  What do I know? Nothing thats what, but I'm going to give it a go.

Elza seems to do flowers and birds and they're A-M-A-Z-I-N-G.  She doesn't sell patterns or do classes but she does share advice etc from her Facebook page.  If you want to check her out, here's her Facebook page.  Elza'z Embroidery

TAST - Closed Herringbone

I've also finished Chicken Little # 92 - Closed Herringbone.  I've had this chicken image in my folder for a while, not particularly keen on it, but figured it might come in handy for a 'filling' type stitch at some point.  Turns out it was perfect for Closed Herringbone - yay!

Here's the link to the whole flock