Finished!

As promised, here's a look at my first finished handwork item of them month.

You're looking at Bareroots Little Stitchies #177 - August. As mentioned, there's one embroidery block for each month of the year.



I've made a few changes. The only stitches the pattern called for were backstitches, lazy daisies, and French knots. As a general rule, line-only embroidery doesn't appeal to me. I prefer to have fill stitches and variations in texture, not to mention dimension and color. Changing up the stitches called for in the pattern really allowed me to do this.



I chose to use satin stitch to create the tree trunk, and I think it looks beautiful. The roof was created using feather stitches (though I auditioned square stitches and couldn't get them quite right). The sun embroidery includes a buttonhole wheel stitch and French knots to create sun sparkles. The hills were embroidered using a (not so neat) stem stitch to create texture to mimic grass.

Additionally, I differed from the pattern in outlining the door and windows in blue rather than brown only because there was so much brown in the block already. All leaves for flowers and on the grass were embroidered in a different green than the hills and tree leaves, just for variation. Lastly, I added a circle into the middle of the front sunflowers. It adds detail, plus I thought it was cute.

Not too bad... I learned three stitches for this block-- buttonhole wheel (as discussed), lazy daisy, and feather stitch. And after all that practicing, I'm pretty much a French knot expert.


Of course, the whole fabric is distorted and I wish I had used stabilizer. Good thing I cut the foundation one inch larger than necessary.!