Embroidered dimensional brooches

Since I stopped selling at craft markets, I have felt unburdened by customers' preferences and what the market wants. Making stuff for fun was my motto this year. Being felled by my tennis elbow was but a small obstacle. I discovered that if I used a short thread and a small scissors, I could still use my right hand. I can't use the big scissors to cut fabric with my right hand at the moment. But I am optimistic.

These are 3 brooches I made a short while ago. I usually start with the embroidery and for whatever reason, my embroidery always ends up as a brooch. These 3 brooches have one thing in common. Can you tell what it is? Yes, the theme is dimensional. I've always liked the idea of embroidery coming out of the fabric.

This is the first one I started with. The petals are open base picot stitch. Only two stitches go into the fabric. The rest of the stitches are woven. The center is made up of Toho seed beads which I anchor to the fabric.

For the second brooch, I wanted to make more of the open base picot stitch. I remember during this period, my elbow hurt like hell and I was feeling very depressed. What made it worse was that I kept how anguished I felt to myself as I felt talking about it would make it worse. Usually when I keep my feelings to myself (and I usually don't - just ask hubs) I turn to my sewing to get me through the day. When I was weaving the green petals, I would do a couple, stop for a while and then continue. So it took me all day just to do the petals. But it was very therapeutic. I don't have to explain myself or think of the worse case scenario or talk about how crappy I felt. That's the best part of sewing. It asks nothing of you but it occupies you.

For the center, I wanted something different from the first flower. I opted for french knots. I looked through my very untidy embroidery thread container and decided I would use mostly reds, yellow and orange plus some purple. I think the french knots took me 2 days to complete. Some of them were made with my left hand. Can you tell?

By the time I made these cherries, I had become better. The NSAIDs had kicked in I could use my right hand a bit more. I struggled mostly with the leaves. I couldn't make up my mind which stitch to use. Believe you me, it took me a couple of days to finally settle on cretan stitch.

This is my first attempt at a dimensional cherry brooch so I think it's not fanastic. I would love to make the leaves dimensional next time. What do you think of the cherries? They are wooden beads wrapped in thread.
If you are interested in how to wrap the wooden bead, I will take some photos the next time I make one. Maybe even in the next post.

I used one seed bead to "close" up the cherry. Do these look like nipples to you? They look like nipples to me. I love the cherries brooch the most because it made me laugh and I really needed to laugh.

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