Just Another Burr-d

Inspirations issue 69 contained a lovely surprise: a Trish Burr bird. The project is called Robin--a deceptively simple name for an elegant study of a beautiful little bird.

Original robin by Sherry C. Nelson

As with Trish's bluebird that I stitched earlier, I believe the source for this design is also Sherry C. Nelson. As I mentioned in the bluebird post, Ms. Nelson's works are wonderful sources for needlepainting adaptations.

The robin is stitched in single strand DMC cotton floss. The ground fabric is the same Copeland linen (no longer available) that I used for the bluebird. I had the idea to frame these two together when they were finished and so used the same fabric. This time, I didn't overstretch the linen, but I can still see that it's a bit out of square. I'm not a huge fan of this linen for surface embroidery. In addition to being stretch-prone, it doesn't have a high enough thread count. In the close-up photos you can clearly see how open the weave is.

The stitching started with branch, flowers, and feet, in that order. Then it was on to the bird's body, beginning with the tail and basically moving to the left over the body and up to the head. The feathers have to overlap correctly, and this determines the stitching order.

As always, Trish did a wonderful job adapting these little leaves and flowers to thread.

There is only one in-progress photo of this little guy. For some unknown reason, I neglected to photo document this project in detail.

The robin was a slightly more challenging effort than the bluebird. There were a lot more colour changes. To me, the most interesting part was the back feathers. I remember working intently on getting the colours to blend, and I am pleased with the way they turned out.

Since I'm an inveterate thread parker, things got a little crazy. There were times in this project where I changed colour with every stitch, so I had to keep the colours available. When I park this many threads, I slow down my stitching and make sure not to hurry. It's much easier to manage this amount of parked threads if you don't rush.

Here's the completed little charmer:

He's still waiting to be framed up with his bluebird buddy. Someday, I'll get around to it. They really do make a nice pairing.

References
 

	Inspirations 69 is available for purchase from the publisher (as of this writing)
	Robin is available as a downloadable pattern from Inspirations Studios