Brazilian Dimensional Embroidery and The Balance of Nature

I have SO much stuff in my camera, but have been busy, or I'd be writing more bloggy things. At the moment, I discovered this little hooty owl among my Millefiori Brazilian dimensional embroidery designs. Many of you have probably already met this guy?  "WHooo?"

Friendly, isn't he? Not. Of course, it could be a good case of indigestion.

“The Balance of Nature” (Millefiori design #959 - available for stitching if you are feeling "sociable") is about the food chain as it relates to Brazilian embroidery and was inspired by the children’s rhyme, “There Was An Old Woman Who Swallowed A Fly…” 

The magnificent owl, a bird of the night and a bird of prey, is associated with wisdom. Our owl is wise enough to capture some interesting creatures and flowers in Brazilian embroidery along with his lunch and its lunch and its lunch, etc.

Innards include another kitty cat, a bird and a mouse that already has an “x” on its eye, plus sunflowers, monarda, asclepias and zinnia. The owl’s perch is a realistic log resting on a bed of ferns.

 

Framing the owl  is a nicely plump and well-fed kitty cat which can be embroidered or a pattern used for transfer to a wooden plaque (included with the fabric print and instructions). I bought my wooden plaque at JoAnn Stores and painted it with acrylic enamel paint (I found a really pretty copper color). I think I used my black Sharpie pen to do some of the outlining. Then I used my MS Word program and printed the title onto paper, glued it to balsa wood and found a nice fat needle to poke into the side of the design. See?

The "tummy" part of this design - the owl and its dinner 'fixins'" are printed on fabric. I used some interesting stitches, some fairly simple.

 

The little sunflowers are my favorite, though, and I've used them elsewhere. They start with a drizzle (double) with a long bullion that fits around the outside of the drizzle, and next I worked a row of detached buttonhole stitches through the drizzle loops and around the bullion (for support).

 

You'll also see that I added my Ridged Blanket Stitch fern to this design. I've written about it previously on this blog.

 I have instructions for the sunflower (I give it a different name depending on where I use it...) in my book My LadyFlowers by Rosalie Wakefield. Here's a better picture:

Sorry about the blur. Maybe I will re-shoot some of these pictures.

 

Anyway, since it's springtime (almost), the idea of birds comes to mind. (I'm keeping my cats away from owls, though!) As you can see, Cuthbert and Emmy could care less.

Rosalie