Minnesota's State Fish Embroidered - Art Every Day Month - Day 22

This is the ninth embroidered square for the Minnesota state quilt that I've been making during November. (Only three more left to go.)

For this square, I found an image of a walleye (Minnesota's state fish) that was in a coloring book produced by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

I debated between doing the image in applique or simply do the outline in the backstitch. I chose the latter since I thought it would be good to have more than one embroidered square (the only other square so far that I have done in embroidery only - with no applique - is the milk carton and glass of milk).

This, by far, was the most labor-intensive square for this quilt. Even though I only used one stitch (backstitch) for the design, the number of stitches, changes of floss color (threading and re-threading the needle; having to do many knots with each color change), added to the time.

So, despite the simplicity of the design, I was suprised at how many hours it took to complete it.  I ended up working on this square over a two-day period (Day 21 and 22) of the Art Every Day Month challenge. 

I think I'll choose something easy to stitch next time - maybe the blueberry muffin. (Minnesota's state muffin. Who knew that there was a state muffin? I didn't...until I started working on this quilt.)