Orange crazy patchwork

This was last seen on my first post about my embellished jacket, when I was looking at pieces to include on it. After I had stitched on several pieces, the orange crazy patchwork didn’t look right in any of the remaining spaces. It was abandoned again. I’m not sure when or when it was started, or what I had originally had in mind to do with it.

I have at some stage done some more stitching on it, possibly at “in the stitch zone” when practising for the crazy patchwork colour play project, but no photos of work in progress. At some stage last year, I realised that it would make a very useful patch pocket on an orange very fine needlecord jacket / shirt that I wear.

Hence the pins and tacking, but abandoned again before it got finished. I had started some backstitching on the butterfly…..

…..so when I picked it up again this week, I carried on outlining the butterfly and adding the veins….

….. it’s been good to work on something so bright and cheerful on the dull days we’ve had most of the week, although we have had two bright sunny days and wonderful blue sky that enticed me out of hibernation.

More stitching needed before I make the pocket, but some progress has been made, and I’ve kept to my not starting anything new in the New Year until I have finished off something in progress. The Red Clover piece was a bit of a cheat, in that as I started it between Christmas and New Year, technically it was my first finish of the year.

Red Clover

After stitching on the book cover (another WIP), I decided to stitch on a postcard. This was much easier to make holes in. It was one of a set I picked up on my travels; this one is by Jane Rushby, done in Gouache, not a medium that I’ve tried (yet).

It’s not quite realistic and not quite abstract, but somewhat stylised. I love the colours and shape of the leaves.

I started by making holes around some of the leaves and petals. They can barely be seen on the right side, but helpfully show up on the back.

They actually show up more on the photo than when I was working on it.

I used pistal stitch with a variegated floss for the clover and some French knots. I’m not sure what the green threads are (picked up off a sales table somewhere), but they are the right tones for the leaves.

Detail of the clover.

The back isn’t the neatest.

I used the heaviest weight green for the lighter coloured leaves….

….. and the finer greens for the smaller leaves. I decided to leave some of the flowers and leaves unstitched to show the painting. The edge of the postcard is white, not the pink it looks below. A strange winter afternoon light as the sun was starting to go down is my only explanation.