Mr Bear - He's done!

Gosh this guy has driven me crazy this week.  I've stared at him this way and that, I've picked him up, I've shifted him about.  I spent a day or two playing with my cheesecloth buttonhole wheels in what can only be explained as totally avoiding him.  

The felt pieces were way too thick, they looked ok in the photo, but in real life they were awful.  I thought for a few days about filling the eye sockets with stitches, but that would've put too much focus on those eyes.  Sigh... I think I hated Mr Bear a bit this week.  I even thought about tossing him in the drawer and starting something else.  But Miss P has her heart set on him.  So I rifled through my stash and found some plain black cotton, did a bit of a test.  Decided that a single strand of floss for the eye highlights was too thick, so I used regular sewing machine thread.

Even now looking at the photo I'm regretting that nose.  I tried to put a few stitches across the top of the nose and couldn't get them right, so I pulled them out.  Arghhhh.  Hmmm he needs something on the top of that nose.  I might well end up hating him again this week.

But we'll see.

Oh I found out who originally drew this guy, a Russian graphic artist called Olga Gamynina.  Thanks Olga, hopefully I did you proud.

Chicken Little #100 - Drizzle stitch

Here she is, Chicken Little number 100.  I think this is my favourite chicken yet.  

Drizzle stitch is of course usually an upright stitch but in order to get her hair to sit 'nicely' I gently tacked each drizzle down in a couple of places.  If I was going to moan about anything it'd be the second 0 in one hundred, it just didn't want to be the same size as the other numbers.  But if thats my biggest complaint then I reckon it came out OK.

If you go to the Chicken Little page above you can see the whole flock.  (next to Home)

Kantha

Just thought I'd throw another photo in of the Kantha piece now its washed and ironed.

Whats Next?

Well yesterday I found a cool sketch of a bear, basically done in just dashes.  So with my running stitch kick I'm currently on I thought I'd have a go at translating that into stitch.  Spent a good wee while finding the right image, making my pattern, having a think about how best to go about it, getting my fabric all ready and then.... NO black floss!! Argh.  I used it all up on the Kantha piece and  didn't have any spare.  Insert rude words here!.

So what to do?!?  Well I spotted some pictures of embroidered cheese cloth the other day, or what we call here Muslin.  Very thin, very loosely woven.  The idea being that you can pull your stitches tighter of looser depending on the look you're trying to achieve.  Now I'm not a big fan of buttonhole stitch (well the whole family of them actually) but this kind of thing doesn't require any great tension, you definitely don't want your stitches to be of a uniform size.  The piece I saw also used running stitch just to pull various areas together but I actually liked the look of buttonhole wheels best.   No idea what I'll do with it (and now I'm out of white floss as well), but maybe it can form part of my fabric book if I ever get that off the ground.

No plan, just making buttonhole wheels until I'm done with it. 😁