Long-time blog readers may remember that a few years ago I exhibited some biological designs at a scientific conference. These works included an image of some zebrafish, which are small, delicate fish that are widely used in studies of genetics and development. The zebrafish design sold at the exhibition, and it was the prelude to several commissions for zebrafish designs, which were intended as gifts for zebrafish scientists. Indeed, since then a lot of these designs seem to figure prominently on Pinterest pages of zebrafish material.

Well, a while back I was asked to do yet another commission of zebrafish, which resulted in these two designs. The first one is a fairly conventional image. showing a school of little glittery fish. They were done with an applique of Mylar, which was then overstitched with a thin embroidery layer. Unfortunately, the scan just doesn't show up the shininess of the Mylar, so you'll just have to take my word for the glitter

Honestly, they really are very glittery…

 

The second image was taken directly from a scientific paper describing some aspects of the molecular genetics of the zebrafish, so this isn't really a portrait of the animal, but rather an expression of some of the science which the zoologist is using to describe the genetics of the fish

 

The Genetic Zebrafish

Both images were fun to do, and I hope will interest their recipients. But it does seem likely that I will now forever be known as a Zebrafish Artist

Last week I mentioned that I'm currently working on some large projects. One of these is a series of birds in birdcages – they're separate designs, not one big panel, but all the same they all did take a while to finish. They're more arty than realistic and I think they might go well on a project such as a cushion cover or something like that. As I said, there are 12 of them, of all different kinds of birds, and here are three of them

 

 

Now – before anyone calls up the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals about me, I do know that these cages would really be way too small for the birds they have in them. But if I made them a realistic size, there would be way too much cage and not enough bird. So just think of these as show cages where the birds stay for a short time before going back to their nice roomy aviaries!

I'm in a quandary. I'm working on several large projects at the moment, but none of them are really at the stage where I can post them. So I've searched back in the files for something to put up, and found these designs which I did for Cherri a while ago. She wanted things that she could stitch on to bags which she was making as Christmas presents for her friends. and I've already posted some of the others

 

 

 

The 1950s back again…

In style they're sort of in-between folk art and the kind of simplified designs that were popular in the 1950's. Actually I quite like that style – maybe it's time for a 1950's revival!

And on a personal note, these designs are particularly appropriate for me just now, because our garden has been invaded by our neighbour's peacocks, who are gobbling all the food we put out for the wild birds, and pecking off the new green leaves of our garden plants. Whoever said that life in the Scottish Highlands couldn't be exotic never lived here!

OK, the first of the month, and it's time for a couple of new freebies. Actually they aren't all that new, because in 2016 I posted two other designs from the same set. They're applique designs from the art nouveau era, and I love art nouveau, so over the years I've done a lot in that style. These are both pretty simple designs – 4×4 inches (100 x 100 mm) with just one applique step

The first Art Nouveau design (number 3, just to be confusing)

 

….and the second (Art Nouveau 4)

 

Here's the first design (Art Nouveau 3, in .pes v.6) with its worksheet and here's the second (Art Nouveau 4) with its worksheet

If you didn't pick up the first two Art Nouveau appliques in 2016, here's a link to the blog where they're posted, so you can add them to your collection. You will have to scroll down a bit to find them:https://theaccidentalembroiderer.typepad.com/the-accidental-embroiderer/2016/12/index.html

Now – I have a question! Does anyone have any ideas for freebies that I could offer? Maybe something I've already posted here, or maybe a new idea that I could do? I've asked this question of readers before and got some interesting answers, so if you have any inspirational ideas, just let me know! For various reasons it might not be possible for me to offer everything that I do, but I'd love to know what thoughts people have. Thanks!

First of all, I owe heartfelt thanks to all those people who responded to my request for ideas of how to finish off the Parliament of Birds that I posted last week. So many fantastic and original ideas! I am now seriously thinking of maybe doing more than one additional bird panel just to make use of all the possible ways to finish it. So – THANK YOU!

But now back to the Big Cats panel, and to the final two designs, which are a lion and a lioness

 

The Lion

 

and his Lioness

And here is the final version of the panel stitched together, with a couple of small  twigs of greenery to make the shape into a regular rectangle.

 

After looking at if for some time, I'm beginning to wonder if I shouldn't have made the backgrounds brighter in some ways. But it's subtle as it is, so I'll leave it. So that's finished. On to something new!

Several years ago I had an idea for a panel with a lot of different birds. They were all to be done in a realistic style, and the whole panel was to be quite large. Well, I digitised a big collection of birds, and stitched them out together. The panel was to be called "The Parliament of the Birds" and it was almost finished. But then I got called away on another job, and totally forgot about the Parliament, which got stuffed into a box somewhere. I found it again during a recent clear-out, but the only problem was that for the life of me I can't remember what was supposed to go in the centre of the ring of birds. Some insects, maybe, for them all to eat? Some chicks? Another bird who would be the Chairman of the Parliament?

The Parliament without a middle

This is a big project, and I don't want to throw it away without making at least some effort to finish it. So does anybody have any ideas about what they're all so interested in? I would be VERY grateful for some ideas!

A couple of weeks ago I posted the picture of a tiger that was going to feature on a Big Cats panel that I was making as a commission. Here are two more of the cats, a cheetah and a leopard

 

The spotty cheetah

 

The spotty leopard

The most interesting problem that these cats presented was how to make the spots. It's not practical to make embroidered spots – there would be way too many jump stitches. So I just painted some fabric with the right kinds of spots (different for the cheetah and the leopard), used the fabric as applique, and stitched over it with a very light density of overstitching. Again, as with the tiger, there are no heavy satin stitch borders to these animals – it just wouldn't be appropriate. The overstitching does blur the underlying painted spots, but that just makes it look a little more natural. And if there are a few stray threads escaping the edges of the applique fabric, well, they are furry animals after all, so you expect a few loose hairs!!

 

It's a bit early for a freebie – usually I post them in the first week of the month, so March's freebie isn't due until next week. But next week I have to go into hospital for a minor eye operation, so I might not be seeing too well next week and I'd better get these out now

The Pennsylvania Dutch freebie that I posted on the 15th of January proved to be very popular, so I thought maybe you'd like something in the same style to go with it. These two are a bit less free and more formal than the earlier design, but they're in the same general style so they all might go well together

 

This is the first one, and here's the .pes file

…and the second one, and here's the file for this one

 

Last November (on the 20th) I posted a large tapestry that I'd just finished, which was based on the medieval mille-fleurs style. As I said then, I've always loved mille fleurs tapestries, and the style seems to me to be well-suited to interpretation in embroidery. So when I'd finished the first mille-fleurs tapestry I started thinking about maybe making another version of it – something similar. but more colourful, more playful

So I started putting together more birds sitting in more leaves, in a slightly different style, and came up with this

 

A modern tapestry idea

By the way – I did stitch out all the squares, but haven't yet got round to stitching the whole tapestry together. So I just scanned the squares and Photoshopped them together into a big but fake construction. So this means that all those blotches and lines and gaps between the squares don't really exist – they're just Photoshop's fault

In the past couple of weeks I've mentioned that I'm working on a couple of commissions – one of these is for a woman whose son is a wildlife vet, and who wanted something appropriate to give him. After some enquiry I found that he particularly liked big animals, like lions and elephants

Now, I am second to none in my admiration of elephants, but from a design point of view they're a bit limited. You just draw a big elephant and that's about all you can do with them. But the big cats make up a very interesting group consisting of many beautiful and intriguing animals so I decided to try my hand at a Big Cat Panel. It's almost finished at the moment, and features a lion, a lioness, a cheetah, a leopard and of course the most spectacular of all, the tiger

 

The Leaping Tiger

Technically it wasn't difficult – just an appliqueed body lightly overstitched with the appropriate colours and then the stripes stitched on top. There's no satin stitch border to the applique, of course – after all, this is a real tiger and not a cartoon! He's a nice big size – ten inches from nose to tail tip – so he will make a good "header" for the panel. I'll post the other Cats in the next few weeks