Bullion and French Knots...

Free motion embroidery on linen.  Time taken 3 days so far...

Painted the background with Derwent Inktense, soaking areas of fabric for watercolour effect: colours; grass - Teal Green, Apple Green. Sky - Sea Blue. Tree - Baked Earth. 

Machine embroidery tree bark and grasses, dark brown and green thread.

Base Layer

Leaves machined in Emerald thread and filled in with Teal Green Inktense. 

Sun Yellow Inktense added when green was dry, this gave a lovely blends of greens.

French knot embroidery flowers in yellow and lilac 3 strand embroidery thread in the foreground.

Practising on the Colonial knot and the French Knot, both equally lovely to do with the figure 8 knot being relatively smaller and neater in size.

Adding Flowers

Having great fun with the French knotting, beginning to fill the foreground with other colours and flowers.

Bullrushes added with the Bullion stitch, even though there's no water. Just realised I've done this stitch all wrong!! The thread was wrapped around a long stitch several times to create my effect. Oh well, guess each way works so long as it looks ok.

Added fencing in the background and machine stitched some grasses in front, to create a rustic effect, but it looks too uniform.

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