Fibre and Thread Sketching - week 3

Insects

I must admit I’m not fond of studying insects up close and personal :)  so this wasn't really a favourite subject for me.   After a couple days thinking about it though I remembered the illustrations in an old Winnie the Pook picture book I used to read with the children when they were little.  Unfortunately I don’t have the book anymore.. but one picture was quite vivid in my memory.. Pooh climbing up a tree looking for honey, with really cute bees flying around him.  SO.. bees.  I started searching the internet looking at bees and a lot of the honey bees looked a bit too waspish for my liking :)- I decided to go for a bumble bee – you can’t not love bumble bees they’re lovely! (apart from when one’s climbing through an air vent next to you.. you can hear the droning buzz and see him wiggling his big legs at you as he clambers through.. ugh - 22 years ago and I still remember how it made me shudder and run lol).

So I sketched him (right).. then traced on to tissue paper.

Onto a piece of black felt I placed pieces of patterned yellow cotton fabric under the 

yellow areas on the tracing and pinned (left).

Using the darning foot on my machine I free motion embroidered around 

the outline, and around the yellow areas securing the fabric there. 

Oh I put some white fabric under the wing area too.

After tearing the tissue paper away I needed to trim the excess fabric away as close 

to the stitching as possible.  I actually forgot to going round the bumble’s ‘beak’ -

didn’t notice this mistake until after I’d cut away the excess black felt.. 

too late to put it right I had to cobble together a solution!

After cutting around the outline of the bumble I had a nice sturdy bee – 

which I forgot to take a photo of unattached!  After stitching some simple 

flowers in the corner I FM stitched the bee in place.. 

It was at this point that I realised my bee had a yellow head.. it should of been black!  

I totally forgot to stitch round the outline of his ‘beak’.  All I could do now 

was reduce the yellow area and give him a smaller head.

Finishing touches were  FM embroidered on.. legs, veins in the wings 

(I used invisible thread for the veins.. never used that in the machine before – I'm really pleased with the effect!)

Measures: 4" x 3"