Royal Blue Burr-dy Time

I need some mindless, relaxing embroidery and I have a burr-ning desire to stitch a Trish Burr-d. (Sorry, I couldn't resist!)

There's a blue needlepainted bird designed by Trish in Inspirations issue 77. I've wanted to stitch it from I moment I first saw it years ago. It's a fairy wren and the project is called 'Royal Blue'. There's something about embroidering in blue. It's not a common colour in flowers or animals or thread painting subjects! So, when I come across a blue project, I'm usually interested.

The project photo is possibly my all time favourite Inspirations image.

Instead of making colour copies of the instructions in the magazine--which is what I usually do--I bought the downloadable pattern and printed it. The download is very affordable and easier than doing the colour copies. Also, I didn't have to possibly rip out the pattern pages from the magazine. In addition, I found a high resolution photo of the project on Trish's site which I'm finding very useful in order to see detail.

On this project, I'm going to try out a couple of new-to-me products: Tulip #10 embroidery needles and Graziano Italian linen for the ground fabric. I've had the Tulip needles for ages and keep forgetting to use them. The Graziano linen weave seems a little too open and is semi-sheer, but we'll see how it does.

I traced the bird onto the linen and hooped it up. I began with the branch and leaves. Unfortunately, the photos are very poor quality due to lighting issues. The photos are a little better at full size (i.e., when you click on them).

The branch is embroidered with three shades of grey. In the photo below, I've split stitched the first two shades and am waiting until the leaves are complete in order to add the darkest shade. The branch doesn't look great at this point. For me, when it comes to shading, it's all about the shadows.

I had to play around with the leaf, just a little bit. I added a third (darker) colour to the left half. Then I added some lighter colour to the top of the right side as a highlight. I'm not convinced I like the highlight, but I may be too mono-focused on it!

I stitched the upper leaf and this is where things currently stand. (I have a habit of sticking my needle in the bird's head. It's not right.)

I need to put the shadows in because I'm not thrilled with how things look, but it will get better!

References

• Royal Blue downloadable pattern from Inspirations Studio
• High definition photo of the fairy wren from Trish Burr's site