Riotous wild flowers

This was inspired by Karen's vibrant flowers, and also Rosiepink's lovely meadow scenes and their helpful ebook on Creating Felt Artwork. For me it acts as a sort of sampler, to try out some machine and hand embroidery to embellish the flowers. 

I am learning from my mistakes! I think the background should be clearer and less streaky. and another time I would not include such an expanse of empty sky. (I filled it with some silk embroidered clouds, but it's not quite right.) Also the mixture of flower colours is a bit random - all pastels, or all brights might work better. 

I might make it into the front of a cushion. 

Here is a detail:

Tea time!

I needed a large tea cosy for our house in France, and was really pleased with how this simple, bold poppy scene turned out. 

I used some dyed merino in soft greens and blue-lilacs, and then added some wisps of  silk. The poppies were cut out of lightly prefelted red merino, and the stems were knitting wool. The whole thing was made around a plastic resist cut from a supermarket bag. It seemed huge, but I worked hard rolling it in a bamboo blind until it had fulled and shrunk down to the right size. It's lined with purple cotton. 

Felt is the perfect material for a tea cosy as it insulates so well and I know I am going to get a lot of pleasure from this one. 

Here is the other side - 

Poppies again

I needed another card, so made this small piece of felt.To make the poppy red I blended together some red and yellow wool.( I don't actually have carders, so use old dog brushes instead!)   I roughly needlefelted the background, with some red and blue blobs for poppies and cornflowers, then wet felted it gently. When dry, I used free motion machining to add stems, grasses and to define the flowers. 

Imperfect poppies

The composition of this one does not work, so I count it as another learning experience! I'd wet felted in a few red blobs for poppies. Them I added some french knots, and finally some machine stitching. Quite like the wobbly stems to the poppies. Wondering if I could add something else into bring the 2 clumps of flowers together...golden grass stems over it all?

Instant golden cornfield added! A bit better.