Working for a living is really cutting into my crafting time. At the moment in these early stages, everything is pretty hectic, and I am putting in some fairly long hours, so weekdays/nights are pretty much a no-go on the crafting.

However, Friday I got out early and felt the urge for some crafting, and this week at work I have mainly been all about the enteric bacteria, so that was the inspiration for this little pretty!

That, and this picture:

(taken from here)

This being Escherichia coli, favourite plaything of molecular geneticists and scourge of clinical microbiologists – diagnosing E.coli gastrointestinal infections in the routine way is a bit of a pain.

Anyhow, I used this artist’s rendition to sketch out a copy on graph paper (freehand! Get me! I generally consider my artistic talents to be very limited indeed ;)), and used that to convert it into a cross stitch pattern.

I stitched it on evenweave, using DMC 602 for the cross stitch of the cell, and backstitch around the edges, and DMC 601 to stitch the flagella.

I then added the scientific name in DMC 3799, and mounted it on some board ready for framing:

My frame was just an inexpensive gold Virserum frame from IKEA.

I think it looks pretty cute!

If you want an E.coli cross stitch of your very own, you can get a .pdf scan of my sketched out pattern here.

You’re welcome.

Mine is going to sit on my desk, look pretty, and inspire me to get stuff done!