Bazzil In Stitches.

At the Indigo Mill retreat Steph led a class on stitching using the Bazzill In Stitches cardstocks. I chose to use the 'flower' page as it lent itself really well to the theme of one of my photos of Freya taken on holiday in Lanzarote this year. I chose bright, zingy cerise, yellow and orange to go with the top that she was wearing that day. The silly face she's pulling is because she was imitating a monkey btw!

Steph also showed us how to accent felt by stitching onto it. For the flower I handcut a circle in pink and embellished it with a yellow running stitch using all 6 strands of embroidery thread for a bit of texture. I then pulled the threads slightly to create a bit of depth. I cut a flower shape from Orange felt and edged that again with yellow thread before cutting a large (coaster sized) piece of yellow felt and, using cerise thread, edged it with a chain stitch around the edges. Using orange thread on this large circle I made 5 large stitches from the centre to the outside edge and gathered them to made 'petals' to match the orange flower in the middle layer. I finished it off by sewing a bright and funky button into the centre, before hand cutting 4 leaves from thick velvet cardstock and creasing them down the centre for yet more texture.

The flowers on the cardstock are all stitched using the full 6 strands of embroidery thread as I wanted a really chunky, tactile feel to the page. Finally I threaded a bead on to a strand of thread to go into the centre of the large flowers.