Fowl Embroidery - The Beginning

I started another hand embroidery project this week, making some tweaks based on what I learned from my first project.  You might remember the cow.

I used to store my floss in plastic sheets in a ring binder, but when I turned the pages, the bobbins kept falling out.  In hindsight, it was still worth the money to buy the package of binders and plastic just to have the bobbins.  It was only $3 - $4 I think, for a package that had 60 bobbins.

I moved the bobbins to one of those little boxes you get pretty cheap at Menards.

I'm using this book again.  For my first project, I used just one image.  I wanted to focus on the technique and keep the project small.

For my second project, I used multiple images and made a little tableau.  The book comes with a CD.  Just bring the images into Photoshop and resize them.  Each of these images originally filled an 8 1/2 x 11 paper, but I reduced them and this entire collection is only 8 inches square.

Here's a peek at what I have so far.  The blue lines are made with a Frixion pen and will disappear with a hot iron.  I still have to do their eyes with French knots.  I'm going to wait until the end to decide what color they'll be.

I did the cow with three strands of floss.  I started one of the chicks with two strands, and you couldn't see the color very well, so I stitched over it to make a total of four.  That looked weird, so I tore it out and redid it using three.  The reason I wanted to try two strands was to make it easier to thread the needle.  Even though the needle has a large hole, my needle threader was still getting caught trying to pull the thread through, and it kept bending.  So I reverted to the Luddite method of threading a needle by wetting the end of the thread and pinching it really flat.  That works very well for me.

I hope to have this project finished next week.