My latest creative adventure for my shop has been creating a little wildflower garden cape. I used reclaimed soft vintage New Zealand wool, in a lovely soft yellowy green colour which lent itself beautifully to a little garden theme where I could add some of my favourite critters. A ladybug, bumble bee and butterfly are to be found enjoying themselves in the garden. Firstly I stitched the grass and flowers with wool from a bag of odds and ends. Many hours, including picnics on the back lawn and lots of nights in front of TV were spent hand stitching all the little grasses and flowers waving in the breeze around the bottom of the cape. Poppies, dandelions, forget-me-knots and little yellow daisies all feature, along with a few different varieties of wild grasses. With the poppies I went for a bold simple look using back-stitch in red, with bold black centers. Dandelions were slightly more tricky. I wanted them to look really delicate, as though a tiny breeze could blow them away. I discovered (after much trial and error) that the little seeds needed to be more of a dash rather than a dot, and needed to radiate out from the center. Daisies and forget-me-nots nestle amongst the grasses around the hem. With the foliage complete, I slowly added our little friends. A few sketches were drawn on paper first until I was happy that they looked "friendly", then I hand stitched them directly onto the cape with wool. I added a few little flight lines from the bee to show he had been busy collecting pollen from the poppy. The ladybug is enjoying a sunny afternoon on a piece of nice long grass, and contemplating where she might fly to next... A happy purple butterfly is resting under the hood. When you put the hood on she flutters out on her own little adventure. I lined the cape in a happy yellow and white striped cotton. The entire cape is fully reversible, although I don't imagine you would ever want to cover up the theme! My lovely neighbour's grand-daughter Milly, was nice enough to model this darling little cape for me, and while outside a cicada landed on the embroidered grasses on the cape... I was proud to think my stitching was good enough to fool the real thing! This cape will be finding it's way to my shop very shortly - and hopefully to a lovely new home.