
Embroidered watercolor of the island of Mauritius, featuring the national flower, Ruizia boutoniana.
Process
I have been teaching embroidered watercolor at Jansen, a local art center. So I thought I would try a more difficult piece. This is a 12×12 inch watercolor, which is too big for comfortable embroidery. You can’t fold it to access the center like with embroidery and cross stitch.

Digital pencils! I obviously skipped the radiating lines. It was from one of the old maps I was looking at.

Just the watercolor is delightful.

Keeping it simple to track, I started by embroidering the waterways. I debated adding state lines but they weren’t states back when the dodo was being destroyed.


This is the part that took forever. The water decoration. But they are so much fun in the finished piece!!

A bug landed on it while I was working and wandered onto the back. Which is great because I would have forgotten to take shots of this part of the process. A varied carpet beetle. Thanks, pal. But I’m still glad we don’t have carpet downstairs and already wanted to replace the upstairs.