Flower Bear Finished & new project started

Finished my Flower Bear a week ago or so but the lack of daylight really made it impossible to make a half decent photo. So when the sun came out this morning I grabbed my camera and made a few photos.

Here he is a bit closer. I really enjoyed making this piece and it has inspired me to start another embroidery, similar to the Flower Bear.

I received a Frixion pen from Rebecca in an &Stitches Secret Santa swap (alongside other fabulous goodies like different M & M flavours we don't have over here...) and used it to draw directly on the fabric. So the lines are a bit wobbly but I really like the freedom of drawing up a design like that, even though it's not my usual method of getting a design on fabric. The roses are based on an old embroidery I saw on the cover of a book but I didn't follow the example too closely.

I also got out my Anchor Embroidery Threads (bought a big lot second hand on Ebay years ago) and found some interesting colours like a really bright red, a shade I haven't seen among my DMC threads yet. My experience from stitching a pixelated rose in French Knots earlier this year, made choosing colours for this project easier and helped in my understanding of shading. So I'm happily adding orange and pink and really dark red shades to stitch these roses. :)

I probably won't have much time to work on this over Christmas but hopefully I can bring you an update on this project in the new year. Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas!