Party Squid!

I made this for Em's birthday. The squid pattern is by Sew Lovely Embroidery (available on Etsy here) and I added seaweed embroidery and sequin bubbles. The backing fabric is Makower Full Moon Lagoon. I used water soluble crayons for the squid itself and mostly satin stitch for the rest. I have now learnt that doing long satin stitch invites disaster (middle balloon, some of it is a bit loose) but I haven't used long & short stitch enough to get the other 2 balloons looking, umm, balloon-like. Overall I really like it, I still can't work out where his missing tentacle is (count the ones above the ice cream and the ones below it), or whether he is actually a squid. Or male.

The embroidery pattern has loads more that I want to try, including a ship being wrecked by a giant octopus and several mermaids. The iron-on worked extremely well and I think I could make several more squids from it before it fades too much. I am very tempted by the Space Case sheet by the same company with retro robots.