Sunflower Crewel Embroidery - Preview Day 3

First off - let me remind any of you local folks but the Webs Tent Sale is this coming Saturday and Sunday. I will be having a booth on Saturday at the "Fleece Sale" from 10 to 5. I will be selling our Leyden Glen Lamb and some other goodies if I can get myself organized. Here is their site for more info.

Back to my Sunflower Pillow project. The last sunflower I stitched was inspired by the maturing sunflower blooms. As sunflowers bloom and age, their outer rings become more textured. This is a Stella Gold Sunflower - another favorite variety of mine. You can see its outer ring has lots of texture. 

Here is another sunflower - variety unknown - with its center beginning to take on a rounded and textured appearance. 

This is the largest sunflower in the pillow design. It took a lot of stitching but it was fun to make over the days I was selling at the Farmers Market. The outside petals were stitched in stem stitch packed tightly together.

I used Turkeywork to give the texture to my outer ring of my third sunflower. I didn't cut the Turkeywork - just left it looped. Here is a detail, showing a side view of the looped Turkeywork. As you can see, I used two different shades of brown in the needle at the same time to give a multi-color look. Towards the center, I changed the colors a bit. Turkeywork takes a lot of thread. 

For the center of the sunflower I used French knots. I used multiple strands to get larger knots. I built a swirly pattern with the darker brown to mimic the natural pattern of the center of a sunflower. Then I filled it in with a gold color. At the very center, I used a light green color. 

For the leaves, I decided to let the fabric show through to give a little extra visual texture. I used random cross stitch. To create the jagged edge, I used fly stitch. The center vein was created with open chain stitch. 

I teach Crewel Embroidery on-line on Craftsy - use the following link for half off the price of the class because you are a blog reader: 
www.craftsy.com/ext/KristinNicholas_3938_H

I am also offering an advanced Crewel Embroidery Class here at the farm in August. Info here.)