African Violets

I went to visit an elderly Aunt last Saturday  she has moved house since my last visit, her new place is a top floor flat, and she has turned it into a lovely cosy home.  There are so many lovely things surrounding her most of which are gifts from family and friends, a beautiful picture of poppies painted by her niece and a lovely landscape painted by a friend and a hand made picture frame containing a photo of my sons graduation.  I could see that she treasured these gifts as they were all in a place of prominence where her eyes will fall upon them while she sits in her cosy chair.  You can just tell when someone appreciates hand made things. Well it's her birthday next week so I wanted to give her a special gift for her new home so I have made these African Violets I hope that she will like them.   I  love African Violets but they never seem to live that long for me, or they will bloom and then the flowers die and you have to wait so long for them to reappear.  So I think that this is the perfect solution, they are very realistic don't you think.  
It's a June Gilbank design  and as soon as I saw the pattern I had to buy it.  I have never tried making anything like this before so they may not be as perfect as they should be but the pattern is quite simple and easy to follow. I added a few of my own touches like adding the little ladybird and the butterfly.  In fact I liked it so much I made a smaller version for myself :)

The pictures don't really do it justice I have been wanting to show you all these all week but the lighting has been so dull and the photo's turned out very dark, in the end I took the photo's outside on my patio between the showers.

The ladybird and butterfly can be found in the book 75 Birds and Butterfly's

I adapted the ladybird to make it smaller to fit the leaf