Meet Miss Daisy O'Hare

What better time than Easter to introduce my first counted canvaswork character: DAISY O'HARE.....Yes, she's the first (I hope) of many other characters that can be stitched BY COUNTING!!! In other words, she's not a painted canvas - she's stitched on a blank piece of pink 18 ct. canvas and counted from a very detailed stitch graph(printed in color.)

Here's her story: I do love painted canvases and truly have a weakness for canvases with bunnies on them (how much cuter can a canvas get?!?) Anyway, as much as I love them ALL, I can't -alas - afford to buy them all, so I thought, "Why can't I create a counted bunny canvas that has just as many delicious stitches as a hand-painted & stitch-guided canvas? Let's just see what I can come up with..."

So I started to stitch Bunny O'Hare (what I originally called her) by first finding a springy variegated silk thread (used in her skirt and along ribbon edges), then matched a bunch of pastel silks to that. And I was off and stitching...

I wanted to create an Easter ribbon border, so I went on to work on that, leaving room to add inset sections of something springy.... I first thought to put eggs in those inset panels, but as I "fleshed out" Miss Bunny I realised that the flowers on her skirt and apron needed to be repeated in the border. So I stitched a feminine bouquet of bullion roses and lazy daisies and then realised by doing that, her name had changed to MISS DAISY O'HARE. I also added sections of stitched gingham done in four different spring colors, to give it a rather springtime, patchwork feeling!

And voila! --- Miss Daisy O'Hare is ready for sashaying along to the Easter Parade. (Yes, her hips are a little wider than I planned, but with nibbling on all those chocolate eggs, she has quite a bustle, doesn't she?) And she's sure to catch the eye of batchelor Buster O'Hare (who I've started stitching on light blue canvas. Buster is a farmer bunny who wears blue overalls and carries a basket of veggies - quite the catch!)