Swap inspiration- Crewel Flowers

Hello freaky flowers swappers- how are you getting on?
Here is some blooming lovely stitchy inspiration for those of you taking part in the freaky flowers swap (and for those who aren't too!)

Look at this beautiful bright floral crewel embroidery I found in the &Stiches pool, its by Liz Smith (whose lovely Native New Zealand flowers we featured in April). She has taken a traditional technique and brought it up to date with a modern design and zingy colours.

Flowers stitched in bright crewel threads can look really bold and the wacky stylised shapes from more traditional Jacobean crewel would be perfect for our freaky flowers theme. Despite Jacobean crewel being a very traditional technique there is something very modern about the abstracted blooms in Jacobean embroidery.
I found a free e-book on Project Gutenberg with some wonderful examples. The book contains several patterns with stitch guides so it's a pretty good free resource for anyone wanting to try their hand at crewelwork. Crewel tends to stick to a few fairly simple stitches and because wool is thicker than floss it is quicker than regular embroidery. So if you are a bit late starting something for the swap don't panic; you still have time to be inspired by the examples below.

This is my favourite image from the book- you can't get much more of a 'freaky flower' than the loopy flower on the right hand side of this illustration- it looks like something from a sci-fi film!

This large design is so pretty. It's meant to be stitched in blues but I think it would look even better in bright oranges and pinks like the piece by Liz above. Or perhaps using dark greys and pops of neon?

What are you stitching? Please share in the &Stitches Flickr group. We'd love to see it!