Poppies by Jo Butcher

At Inspirations we are blessed to receive many emails expressing how much the needlework community enjoys our publications and the projects we publish.

As we have said many times before, we’re incredibly proud of our small yet mighty team that dedicate their formidable skills and talents to bring the world’s most beautiful needlework to life through the pages of our magazine, books, patterns and even this newsletter.

However, in many ways we are just the scribes who document what is entrusted to us – a resplendent pageantry of projects masterfully designed and stitched by the artisans we publish.

We are humbled to work with projects of this calibre and this week’s featured project is the perfect example.

If you would be so kind as to indulge us, we’d love to share with you some of the remarkable back story as to why it’s such an honour for us to be writing about the project Poppies by Jo Butcher today.

For Jo, this journey began in 1999. You can read all about her remarkable and life changing encounter with embroidery and Inspirations magazine on her website HERE. It’s well worth the quick read and will help put the rest of this article in perspective, so go ahead and read it now and we’ll wait for you…

In 2013, we published our very first project by Jo, ‘How to Sew a Meadow’, which appeared in Inspirations magazine issue #83. As Jo mentions in her story, this was an amazing full circle moment for her as she transitioned from embracing needlework at a time of great sorrow to, 14 years later, becoming a contributor herself.

The next amazing milestone in this blossoming relationship between Jo and Inspirations occurred in 2022 when, together, we released the stunningly beautiful book Where Meadows & Gardens Grow.

Jo had now officially become a published designer with her very own book showcasing her magnificent artistry – a truly well-deserved accolade.

Now we’d love you to take a minute and have a look at a project gallery that we’ve put together showing all the Jo Butcher designs we have published to date in chronological order HERE.

Start at the bottom of the page, where you’ll see her debut project ‘How to Sew a Meadow’ and scroll up to the top.

What do you notice about the two most recent designs?

As if it wasn’t enough for Jo to create the most idyllic countryside and seaside floral scapes set against hand-painted pastel backdrops with beautifully stitched bouquets, now Jo has raised the bar even further by adding three dimensional elements to her creations.

Which brings us back to Poppies from Inspirations magazine issue #125.

The poppy is a joyful flower signifying the arrival of warmer weather as its fragile, blowsy petals open out to greet the sun and add vibrant splashes of colour everywhere they bloom.

Popular as a garden flower, their tenacious habit sees them appearing in the smallest paving cracks or across whole fields in astonishing displays.

Jo celebrates this resplendent flower in true Jo Butcher style, using all the tricks from her formidable box of magic starting with the first layer, another one of her fabulous hand-painted Jo Butcher originals as the background.

The second layer features two perfectly shaded poppies created using long and short stitch in gradient hues of salmon and strawberry.

For the third and most spectacular layer, Jo adopts her latest offering, a foray into stumpwork, as an ingenious progression to bring her floral creations to life, like never before.

Three detached poppy petals stitched in darker shades to add drama and colour depth, accompany a fern green stumpwork leaf to elevate this design beyond the frame.

The final result is an exquisite piece that perfectly captures the fleeting beauty of a poppy in all its glory and adds another chapter to Jo’s embroidery fairytale, with this her first project to feature on the cover of Inspirations magazine.

If you too want to celebrate the wonder of the poppy Jo Butcher style, you can create your own masterpiece exactly as it appears on the magazine cover.

In the Poppies Ready-to-Stitch kit, Jo has provided a pre-printed fabric background of her original painting ready for you to begin stitching.

The only thing left for you to do now is order your kit using the link below along with a copy of issue #125 or the digital pattern for the instructions.