Caria, A Little Mushroom Mouse

 

As I have said, I have developed a quite pronounced shake to my right hand and although I can embroider forever I now struggle to paint tiny face so my work must change. 

These little mice represent the start of something new and different for me and I am loving all the fiddly stitching and their overall look. 

I am working here, on 22 count hardanger and each piece of the dress must be overlocked before commencing to stitch or the evenweave unravels. Also each piece of the bodice must but slightly larger than the pattern to accommodate the embroidery as this pulls in the bodice. 

I thought long and hard about how I would work the embroidery on the dresses and settled, quite happily, for the counted thread work style that I had developed over the years. It will be interesting to see how the work develops. 

Meadow, A Harvest Mouse

Meadow is my first attempt at an embroidered dress for my dolls. This is the direction I want to go in. More work on each doll, making them totally unique. I will still make dolls in lovely Liberty fabric but I want to embroider as much as I can. 

I want to work on evenweave fabric so that I can incorporate counted thread work as well as free style embroidery. I must admit to liking the order an evenweave imposes. This little girl has french knots, bullion knots, lazy daisy and lots of straight stitches with couching as well as fern stitch. I wanted to create a meadow.

I used a Liberty lawn as her underskirt and this has proven a mistake. It distracts from the embroidery, competing with it not complimenting the stitches. Similarly I stitched a small sampler for her sachet and that was too much of  a similar look. Instead I have gone for a tonal silk with a bullion rose.

Since last year I have noticed a tremour in my right hand that has started to make painting tiny faces very difficult but I can embroider forever. So more mice, rabbits and birds and less of everything else. I will still do commissions but only one or two a month not the number I have been doing.  I love making this little mouse, she was a joy xx