October Beetle.

As I am going to be away for a few weeks over the next couple of months, I wanted to get on and finish the monthly beetle series while I have the time.  This then is the beetle for October, and as always, I first carved the rubber stamp, printed it onto the fabric that I had previously dyed, and then stitched around the stamped lines. I then painted over the stamped image.  The leaves are also my hand carved stamps, and I machine stitched around them too, but didn't paint them as I wanted the beetle to be the focal point. One more to go, the beetle for November which is to be on a chocolate brown background. It's always a challenge to have the beetle properly visible on a dark background, as I have found when the colour chosen by the group was black or indigo.