Needle felted and embroidered bird. My first embroidery attempt!

I needle felted the leaves and flowers, and embroidered the blue bird onto printed fabric.

Needle felting is when wool is stabbed with special barbed needles. I stabbed the wool onto the canvas, which had the design on it. I went over the felted parts with embroidery. I've never done any embroidery before, but I figured I'd give it a try and see how it would look with felting. There was a lot of stabbing with sharp objects!

Detail of the felting and embroidery

Most of the stitches are versions of straight stitches or French knots, and leaf stitches.

Back to the beginning! Here's the start of the project.

I was needle felting the leaves and branches. This took a while, but was therapeutic. STAB STAB STAB

I needle felted all the flowers and leaves over the design on the fabric.

I didn't match the colors exactly from the fabric, so I wanted to make sure all the felt overlapped the original design.

Working on the embroidery. Got the leaves done!

I feel like the leaves are messy because they were the first part I did. I will do better next time!

Detail of the progress on the flowers

Mostly simple stitches and french knots. Just tried to make it look interesting.

Working on the bird's stitching

I used leaf stitches for feathers and more french knots for the white parts.

Finished with the stitching! It's still on the plastic loop.

I kind of made up stitches for the tail, and I think next time I'll do more research to find better options. I tried a few different ones, but none turned out exactly like I wanted. So next time I think I'll do a better job with the tail to make it more clean looking.