Facets of the Heart

Greetings for the New Year stitchers!

 I'm please to say the first release of 2015 is up in the shop...

just a little sweetness

I was inspired of course by St. Valentine's Day, but also I reference the symbols of crochet patterns in the 'chains' which add a little frill to a simple paper-cut heart.  I also enjoyed using the DMC shade 'Antique Mauve' for the rose petals which complemented the olive green vines and perked up the rest of the quite neutral pallete. 

The model here is stitched on 32 count Zweigart linen colour 'Flax'.  I tend to use this brand a lot in my stitching, it's easily available here in the UK and I like how the threads are firm to stitch through and don't move when I pull the thread to its end.

Here's the initial concept sketch, it didn't start with so many birds!

... and things got moved around quite a bit when it went to the computer stage...

 I contemplated making this into an embroidery for cloth with running stitch and the like, as I wanted to keep those fluid lines which can get ironed out during the translation to cross-stitch, but, I'll save that thought for another time.  It will be a new adventure when it happens, there are always new creative avenues to explore :-)

A big thankyou to all the lovely people who have purchased from Goodflora Stitchwort, I recently passed the 100 sales mark! It's a nice encouragement to go on creating - so THANKYOU ladies!!!