Brother Rabbit WIP

The past week has been crazy busy, culminating with yesterdays harvest. After the madness, with people, tractors and trucks all over the place, today seems oddly and nicely quiet. I am not complaining.

In between it all I have managed to make some progress on Brother (Easter) Rabbit - or rather on his surroundings.

The large leaf is complete. This is the only one that will be stitches onto the main fabric - the rest are going to be done separately and attached later. These leaves are rather large and I am very aware that if I am not careful, they could easily become too dominant which is why the colours are toned in with the blue-grey silk ground rather than being bright greens.

The flower at the top right hand side kind of resembles a daffodil which to me, having grown up in Europe is very much an Easter flower. It still confuses me that it is not Easter when the daffodils are flowering here.
The main part of the flower is padded with layers of felt. My stitch choices, burden stitch for the petals and laid work over the padded part, are really more common in crewel work but the textures that they create work so well for what I wanted. The lattice tied down with very fine gold - I did try silk first, but even though the gold is very hard to see, it still worked much better.

Lastly, a lonely padded satin stitch petal for the other flower...

That's it - apart from Mr Rabbit's legs and tail, that is all that I am going to stitch directly onto the ground. 

I am getting stuck into the detached leaves today. I am going to try very hard to have this piece ready (and kitted?) in time for Easter - and really, that is not so very far away. 

Nothing quite like a deadline, even when it is self-imposed.

Happy stitching,

Anna x