hares bolster cushion - The World of Cross Stitching 278

The new issue of WOXS is in the UK shops and in it there`s one of my favourite collaborations with Fiona Baker who designed this project that is basically Spring in a bolster cushion. March hares running across fresh green grass, amongst crisp white flowers... yeah, as I said: SPRING! 😍

Since I`ve already had a discussion with a friend re: how you can`t shake out that napkin without covering your whole bed with croissant flakes, let`s just ignore that tray for the noo and concentrate on the cushion. 😉 I don`t think it`s that obvious from the above pic, but the hares are actually stitched on the over-dyed section of a large piece of aida fabric. 

Hmm, maybe not even here... I should have taken a photo of the blank fabric when it arrived... meh, too late. You`ll just have to take my word for it that it`s a pale, almost minty coloured aida and a quarter of it is over-dyed (by Sew-It-All. There`s an interesting article in the mag about how they work and what magic they can do with fabrics). So that section where I stitched the hares had an almost marbled effect, with darker greens swirling through the mint.

Well, thanks to the flash, it`s hard to tell it`s green but at least there`s the marble effect I was talking about. I loved this stage: not only were the three "bunnies" quick to stitch, they also reminded me of a zoetrope - I kept wondering if I had had more time and stitched a row of them to form a cylinder, would I have been able to create the illusion of motion? 😆

The next step was to add the flowers. They only use 3 colours: the crispest white (B5200) and the palest greys (762 and 415) but I love how muted and delicate they are to let the black backstitch detail pop:

Perhaps not for those who can`t stand backstitch, this project took 47 hours to finish (14 of those for the BS), but I think it is worth the effort for the end result, whether someone makes it into a cushion of frames it. There`s also a splash of colour at the bottom with the pink lazy daisy stitches (there`s also a handy tutorial in the mag on how to do these - hence the 3 little pink flowers missing from the middle of the bottom of my pic), and there`s even some added bling in the form of sequins attached to some of the flowers, so there`s plenty going on here to keep a stitcher busy and entertained. Have fun, peeps, and happy stitching! 😊