Needlepoint Cat

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First of all I want to say thank you for all of your kind comments about my embroidered garden, it really made my week :)  I thought that you'd might like to see this - a needlepoint cat that I made last year for the village show and won best in show with him too!  I had initially wanted to make a fully jointed needlepoint teddy bear and made him as a trial run.  He is ten inches tall and would probably make a good door stop.

I used all the colours that I loved and fell in love with the DMC Rayon range which have such amazing tones (of course they have now discontinued it now).  I also used the DMC Light Effects threads and Anchor soft cotton as well as the usual stranded cotton and pearle.  I wanted to use as many different patterns as possible and with needlepoint you can change the entire look of a stitch by adding a different colour or similar shade.

The needlepoint patterns were taken from a range of 1920's and 1930's books, although there are lots of new books out there who also have a great range of patterns to choose from.


The back of the cat - I wanted to make the back a little paler than the front to add definition.  I wanted to copy the stripes on my cat's tail and doing the diagonal stitching was so much fun to do - and also worked up in no time.

Face close up - I couldn't find the right colour eyes so I ended up using plain glass and painting them instead.  You can't really tell from the photo, but to shape the face I did a little bit of needle-sculpting that defined his cheekbones and eyes.


Back of the head, again, trying to copy tabby cat markings with the diagonal stitches on the side.

There are some more close up photos of the stitches on my Flickr account here as well as some more close up photos of the embroidered garden too.

I hope that you like him :)