An ant has become the sixth design in my Anatomical range of embroidered insects.
Elizabeth emailed me quite a while ago now with the suggestion of an ant – her kids were apparently loving the stitched insects. Her other idea was a spider, but I just didn’t have the stomach to sit through designing and embroidering one... I was already casting about for other insects that'd work well as embroideries, so it was a timeous mail. Thanks Elizabeth.
The design came together fairly quickly and then I hit a snag: colour. I knew I didn’t want to embroider the entire ant in black or grey, but couldn’t get my head around how to introduce additional colour while still staying true to the original idea behind the Anatomical designs, which was to keep the insects as lifelike as possible.
Enter Ant-Man.
Anatomical Ant had ended up languishing among my other half-finished designs and sketches, waiting for inspiration to strike. Which happened halfway through the movie. It hit me that Paul Rudd’s costume featured red accents and that this was how I could liven up my embroidered ant.
I’ve added some white as well, to lift the design, as the charcoal grey and rust red are quite dark, strong colours. And taken one or two liberties with ant realism for the sake of engaging stitching.