Although snazzy, snazziness isn’t everything, so I decided to talk you through the construction of the next toadstool (rather than a slideshow), which I declare to be a juvenile Devil’s Bolete.

I chose this nice subtle variegated silk (nauseatingly and wrongly IMO named ‘Pot Pourri’) for the stalk and fins on this one as it was the most neutral of my fine silks. Unfortunately it turned a bit more stripey and yellowy than I thought it would. Oh well. I won’t be able to use it again, seing as it has been half way down my cat’s throat:

Sigh.

Made nice bullion knots though. Now this is to show you things that do go wrong despite the best intentions. I have a couple of patches of beautiful space-dyed velvet that I thought would be awesome as a bit of applique for the cap here. I tried it:

It sucked. Mainly because the colour just didn’t go with the silk I’d already used for the first bit. I actually really liked the velvet but considering the difficult relationship I have with the bullion knots I hated the idea of picking them out more than the idea of picking the velvet off. Plus the velvet pile frayed quite a bit. So I swapped it out for felt:

The felt is quite pinky/mottled which works well (better in real life). Then I french knotted the base in a lovely autumn leaves kind of variegated cotton.