Wild Flowers was actually the first design idea in my Wild range of patterns. Sometimes it just works like that.
I spent a few days on the Highveld at the beginning of last year, walking and photographing the wild flowers, which were in bloom at the time. There were so many I could envisage in stitches, but it still turned out to be quite a challenge to pick and choose from the huge variety, and to figure out enough different stitches to keep the embroidered versions interesting to stitch. The other thing that took some mulling over was the thread colours. Unlike the other Wild patterns, this one needed more of a variety.
As such, although Wild Flowers fits in with Grass, Pods, Ferns and Coral in terms of size and feel, it is a bit of a standalone in that the colourway is a little different. And I've taken creative licence with the colours compared with the real-life flowers that inspired them.
I thought about not doing this one, seeing as it had been sitting around for so long and was a little different from the other four. But I kept coming back to it and am glad I got it figured out in the end. The vibrant corals and yellows, combined with rich greens and two shades of white, are really pleasing on the eye. And the multitude of sometimes unusual embroidery stitches, some that I don't use all that regularly, drew me in and kept me embroidering long after I'd usually have stopped stitching for the day.