Almost Finished.

 I decided to give the 3 main insects red beaded eyes, with the 4th more distant dragonfly just having painted eyes.
The 3 really distant small dragonflies have no stitching or painted wings so they are much paler. Hopefully they will look as if they really are flying off  out of the picture. I also stitched the closest water plant, again leaving the more distant ones unstitched and paler to give the illusion of distance.

The reeds have hand stitched tops, done in a variegated thread and look as though they will be O.K.

Box and Dragonfly.

 Following on from a comment on yesterday's picture, I have added a similar box to the one shown in the previous photo.  This is one that I made some time ago.  It has little 'feet' made of coiled up and decorated fabric, but you can't see them in this view of the box.

I have started stitching the reeds and the dragonflies in the stamped piece, but there is a long way to go. I decided in the end to stitch the stems of the reeds on the machine, but to hand stitch the fluffy tops. The wings of the dragonflies are outlined in silver which doesn't show up in the photo. I'm not sure whether to add tiny beads for the eyes, or just work Colonial knots in a shiny thread. So far so good!

Time for Tea?

Unfortunately I can't claim to have worked these gorgeous embroidered teatime treats. They are just beautiful aren't they?

Freaky Friday!

How Does a Bird Work?

                                                         Dissecting a dead bird with Grandad.

                                        Working out which bones are which with a reference book.

Back to the Dragonflies.

Here I'm adding a bit of iridescent paint to the water background and also to the wings of the dragonflies.

Next I'm sorting out the threads for the reeds, which I think will be hand embroidered rather than my usual machine stitching. I need plenty of thickness to the reed stems which might be a bit hard to achieve with machine sewing. I could of course stitch with a heavy thread in the bobbin, but that means working from the back which wouldn't be easy with this design. Hand stitching it is I think.

Cuddly Koala.

      So you thought that Koalas were soft gentle cuddly animals...............check out the claws on this one!

More Cold Weather.