My design: Crewel Heart

As promised, today I'm showing one of my old designs. I call it Crewel Heart, although it is worked in DMC floss thread and not wool, so technically, calling it crewel is a bit of a stretch. But it was inspired by Crewel embroidery designs and patterns – I love this embroidery style so deeply! - therefore, Crewel Heart it is.

Initially there were two palettes for this design that I was going to choose from: a “springy” one with pink, bright green and yellow shades, and one with a combination of golden and burgundy. But, somehow, along the way, the design escaped these two options and decided to be worked in autumn colors.

I had loads of fun when I was stitching this one. One of the things that I appreciate in Crewel embroidery is a huge variety of stitches and their combinations, so this piece was a sort of one big experiment. I decided to do something new, and step out of my comfort zone in my hand embroidery, so some of the stitches were worked for the first time. For example, blanket stitch border for a leaf and a circle spider web for small flowers' centers.

And it was the first time I worked grids. And I loved it! Laid filling gives a wonderful touch to embroidery and it's potential is amazing. I tried few different approaches and each one gave a slightly different look.

The list of the stitches I used here includes some of the ones I already spoke about in the blog: lazy daisy stitch for the small leaves, french knots for tiny red dots, all of the lines are worked in stem stitching, and the lower flowers have split stitched outlining. Among other stitches are long and short stitch and satin stitch.

The base fabric is linen. Actually, it had pinkish shade, so I had to boil it in coffee to dye it in a more natural shade. Camera doesn't reflect it, but in real life, the fabric has a very slight tan. If you do the same, don't forget to thoroughly wash and rinse your fabric afterwards to get rid of the excesses of coffee!

I don't even remember when I completed this design, but a year has passed since then, for sure. My plan for the Crewel Heart is to turn it into a pillow cover - I have a fitting piece of fabric in my stock. But right now my head is busy with other ideas. I'm currently stitching the needlebook I talked about here. It's going to feature some wild flowers embroidery and patchwork!