Scotch Harebells Cross Stitch Panel

No sooner said than done - I've started the fourth (and final) flower panel by John Clayton. When I saw the previous three flower panels together it dawn on me - each of them individually looked nice, but somehow unimpressive, but next to each other their colors worked together and combined into a beautiful picture, that only lacked purple-blue colors for completeness. So - here come the harebells.

I'm stitching them again on Aida 14, only I decided to try Rosace floss.

Similar to the poppies, I'm stitching the  harebells by colors. But while I stitched the poppies, dividing the colors into three groups - reds, greens and background and then stitching as I please within a group, now I had the whim to stitch strictly color by color and take a picture after completing a color - something like a dissection of the picture by colors. What's the point - none whatsoever, it's neither easier nor practical, I just want to see how this will come out. I've stitched enough cross stitch projects now, so I'm curious to try different approaches just for fun :)

So - here are the first five colors, that make the flower heads:

I couldn't find pictures of harebells within my photo archives (and I searched :), so I've illustrated the real flowers with pictures from the Internet. The only bell flowers I found were these cousins of the scotch harebells that grow in the Osogovo mountain:

Wild Poppies

I started the third wild flowers cross stitch panel - Wild Poppies by John Clayton.
This time I decided to shake things up by stitching first only the flowers, then the greenery and last the background. Since I always draw grade lines  on my canvass, stitching here and there is not difficult and made the whole project much more interesting. I'm done with the flowers in only a couple of days and I'm really enjoying it all so far ...

All pictures of live poppies were taken during our trips to Bosnek and Osogovo.

Buttercups Flower Panel

Pattern: Buttercups Flower Panel By John Clayton
Designer: John Clayton for Heritage
Floss: DMC
Canvass: Aida 14
Time to stitch: almost a year, from time to time

This flower panel took me quite a lot of time to finish, I lost most of my interest in it last summer. Not a very difficult pattern, though with a a lot of half stitches, as are most of Heritage patterns. I like it and I think it makes a nice combination with the Daisies. I'm not in a hurry to frame them, because in my enthusiasm last year I bought everything for a third flower panel of the same series - the Poppies. I think I'll start it this summer and finish it gradually when I feel like cross stitching. I found a pace this last month of combining cross stitching, knitting and sewing and so far I'm enjoying it. So while it lasts - I'll need a cross stitch project too :)

The pictures of buttercups were taken during our trip to Osogovo mountains. 

There I saw the most dense population of buttercups per meadow imaginable :)