EMBROIDERY - Cardinal + Goldfinch
I have so many projects to share with you now that Christmas is over and everyone has opened their gifts! For the month of January I will be posting all of my handcrafted presents. This week I want to share the birds I embroidered. The cardinal was made for my mum. She loves cardinals. It goes way back to her childhood and every time she or someone else visits the East coast, we are always on the lookout to spot a cardinal for her. My mum is really good at it, she always finds them. Perhaps her spirit animal is a cardinal. The goldfinch was originally intended as a gift, but I changed my mind and kept it. Yikes. I do not do that very often, but when I put a lot of effort and consideration into a piece I can have a hard time letting it go. I could not convince myself to gift the goldfinch, therefore, he is now mine. And that is ok because I do not keep very many of my finished projects.
These two birds were experimental. I have embroidered before, but not using this freestyle method. I traced a basic shape on my background fabric and then started laying down random stitches. Like most projects, I was concerned at first with how it was going to turn out. About halfway through, though, everything started coming together and it turned out beautiful! The cardinal was first and when it was completed, I was motivated to give it another try with the goldfinch. I had almost abandoned the idea of embroidering more birds and moved over to needle felting. Which is actually not a bad idea in addition to the embroidery. I believe the results would be very different but equally as pleasing and satisfying. Overall, I am very happy with the results. I am not sure if I have the patience to do another. (Reality check, I will talk myself into it sometime during this next year.)
I hope you all had a Merry Christmas!
_Puku_
P.S. Remember the butterfly I made way back in August as one of my first blog posts? I turned it into a brooch as a gift for my mother-in-law. Jake thought it would be a perfect gift for her because his grandmother had lots of butterflies around her home and his mom loves butterflies. I love it when he shares sentimental things like that with me.
