My Flower Pots Overfloweth

After a good start on Lorna Bateman's scissors keeper I had to figure out how to fill the pots at the bottom. I wanted to balance whatever I put in the pots with the colours in the completed areas. I had no idea what I was going to do!

I decided not to worry about creating actual flowers, and primarily focused on colour placement and texture. I also wasn't concerned about whether the flowers would be blooming at the same time or whether they would even grow in the same place. This is embroidery not gardening!

I started with some blue and purple flowers in front of the pots. I had notional ideas of what I thought the flowers might be. I think of these as forget-me-nots and alyssum.

Next I needed to figure out how to get some yellow at the bottom of the design in order to balance with the big bunch of yellow roses at the top.

In went some daisy-like flowers. Someone who saw these thought they were daffodils. That works, too.

I mulled quite a while over my next move. I knew I needed to bring in the pinks from the hollyhocks. I also wanted to use some of the lightest green of the three shades I had available. I hadn't used much of the lightest green because it has a tendency to disappear into the backing fabric.

I also wanted a different flower shape, something spiky. Red salvias popped into my brain. (I had a bit of feline supervision.)

The pink flowers were created with closed fly stitch. They remind me a little bit of hyacinths, but they're really just 'pink flowers'. I like the way they turned out, but I did get a bit carried away. I had not intended to completely fill up the pot and wanted to leave some open space, but it didn't turn out that way!

I filled the area between the yellow and pink flowers with dark purple somethings (also known as French knots).

I was happy with how the colours were going in. However, I began to wonder just where the edge of the design was supposed to be. I had a feeling that I might be too close. I basted in the outline of the pattern template and sure enough, I was right on the edge of the pattern. That won't work. There has to be some space between the embroidery and the border of the pattern because there is an embroidered outline on the scissors keeper. I wish I had put the pattern outline in sooner! No matter, I'll just widen the pattern a little bit.

I embroidered the bees:

Then, I made myself stop stitching, well, that and the fact that I couldn't get anymore thread into many areas. At the end of the stitching I was using the flat side of a small wrench to push the needle through the fabric!

Here's the finished front and top of the inside back with the wisteria (click for more detail):

I went a little crazy adding flowers. It's very lush, though, and there is a lot of detail. I went through a period of not being sure if I liked it. I put it down for a while and when I came back I liked it better. It's growing on me.

Now, I'm off to adjust the pattern and start constructing the scissors keeper.