Stitched Sunflower

For this week’s post, I’m doing more stamping and stitching, trying out another of my stamps with free-motion embroidery.  I used the large sunflower from Visible Image Sunflower Grunge and stamped it onto a bit of old wash basket liner.  I used my large MISTI so that I could repeat stamp if needed.

I put a couple of layers of gold organza over the sunflower and first stitched around the edge of the petals with a golden coloured thread.  Next, I filled in the petals with a lighter yellow.

For the centre of the flower, I started with dark grey but with yellow in the bobbin.  I adjusted the tension so that some of the bobbin thread would pull up to the surface to give the effect of pollen.

I continued the centre with a light brown and then a darker brown at the edge.

After putting a layer of green organza over the leaves and stem, I stitched these in the same way with three shades of green.  I made some random long stitches for grasses at the bottom of the flower.  I then trimmed off the organza around the stitching.

To mount the embroidery into a card, I made a triple section card blank and die-cut a rectangle from the centre section, stamping the sentiments around this frame.

The embroidery was trimmed and adhered to the inside of the card using red-liner tape then the extra panel folded in and glued in place.