The watercolor:

Anna Maria writes:

"The original watercolor presented some problems with the sky (what´s that tree doing in the sky or is it really something at the bottom of the other side of the hill) . . . which I adapted to suite myself. I wanted to recreate the angry sky before a summer storm . . . which often catches tourists on the Adriatic! I pressed a copy of the original onto the canvas (22 mono mesh) to give me a guide to the shapes, but I selected the colors and stitches myself:"

Anna Maria's needlepoint adaptation:

The Istrian House or Adriatic house
size - 15 cm high x 11 cm wide, (6" X 4¼"):

"I used some 35 colors of DMC cotton floss and a gray Eterna silk for a shading blend on the side of the house. The most difficult part was to select the stitches because they had to work with the depth perception . . . in all I finally settled on the tent stitch, bullion knots, straight stitch, tied goblein, french knots and colonial knots . . . and lots of shades of green!"

Click on these two images below to see more detail:

"I certainly found this project challenging and satisfying once it was done.

I am tending towards doing some original work . . . I don't have a lot of experience in design and I am not sure I would be good at it. Adaptations suit me fine for the moment. They seem to be the transition from kits to originality. I want to create modern themes.

On a trip to Australia, I picked up Trish Burr´s book in the Milner Craft Series "Redoutés Finest Flowers in Embroidery". In this wonderful book Trish adapts the botanical flower paintings of Redouté to needlework.

Well, I got hooked. I think Trish Burr has some 17 flowers in the book, and I have done all of them. I am showing you my stitching in progress, of anemones - The flowers are embroidered on a cream cotton satin finished drapery fabric.

I'm stitching my own patterns adapted from a Royal Society of Horticulture calendar. It is so challenging to pick out colors. Colors next to one another just don´t work sometimes, despite what you think as you pick them. "Cherries" is one I am doing. My objective is that looks painted . . but in thread.

Finally I'd like to show you my "Elephant". He is created on beige linen with DMC cotton floss, DMC rayon floss, and gold ribbons. The stitches used are long/short stitch, satin stitch, colonial knots, the spider stitch, spider rose (in gold ribbon), and Palestrina stitch."