I decided to post a small tutorial on embroidery of a voluminous bird from the "Forest Beauties" series.

So, I embroidered the bird presented in the photo. It has already turned out to be of more saturated blue shades. I must say that I used several halftones of blue shades for the embroidery, because I really wanted to show the iridescence of blue colors. I try to use as many halftones as possible, especially if a work consists of a minimum number of colors.

So, we picked up the bird we liked. As usual, we printed out the photo. Then we copied a photo of the bird on paper in order to cut out individual parts of the bird from the paper and then from the felt on them.

For this bird, I took a fabric with a relatively rough texture and painted it with watercolors in slightly greenish-bluish shades, giving the fabric a hint of haze.

I cut out the details of the bird from the paper and the same details from felt. The number of details depends on how much you want to add volume to the bird and how much it will protrude from the embroidery plane. The more voluminous the bird, the more difficult it seems to me, its execution.

Now we superimpose the cut out parts from felt on each other. I used soft felt in this work, maybe someone will go the other way and try a harder felt. Soft felt, folded as shown in the photo, when sewing it to the main fabric is pressed in the place of stitches, you need to take this into account.

The preparatory work has been completed and now you can start the main embroidery with a smooth surface. I embroidered this work on a hoop with a photo attached on the left side. Very convenient, I recommend it. You always clearly see the borders of colors, because you have a photo in front of your eyes, as well as three-dimensional details of the bird help you determine what color you need to embroider in a particular area of work. Only satin stitch embroidery is used in the work.

The branch on which the bird sits, I first lay out of jute, to give it volume, and then sew up floss wood shades.

Of course, special attention should be paid first to the embroidery of the eye, then to the beak and head of the bird. Perhaps someone will decide for themselves, for example, to embroider the eye of a forest beauty with appropriate beads. And the head of the bird should try to embroider, giving it the maximum sloping and appropriate volume. The beak is embroidered with long stitches along the beak configuration with corresponding shades of floss.

Despite the fact that many people will probably find the work relatively difficult, in fact, its implementation is quite simple.

Taking into account my experience in embroidery of three-dimensional birds, I want to say that I try to stick to the shades of colors on the printed photo as much as possible. This helps me to avoid mistakes. Yes, and also, given that your bird is voluminous, try to apply the same stretch throughout the work when performing stitches, i.e. do not overtighten individual sections. Well, if this happened, it's okay, you will need to correct this overstretched section and sew it on top of several layers of stitches.

I pull the finished work on cardboard, attach it with double-sided tape and arrange it in frames for large-scale works that I buy in IKEA. These frames are quite inexpensive, have a wide range of sizes and formats, convenient and very suitable for their simplicity for selected photos of such birds, let's say, antique.

I wish you to find exactly your birds for embroidery and bring spring closer in your heart with every stitch! Success and inspiration!