Embroidered Flower

I drew out a flower and did couching/satin stitch for the stem, cretan stitch for the leaves, french knots for the center of the flower, long and short for the petals. The bar at the bottom is a piece of reverse painted plastic I had done a few years ago and cut up.

First time I've done Cretan stitch , and I would love to try some of these ones.

Digitized Embroidery
A visitor mentioned digitized embroidery and I found this really cool watch at Craftzine
It's a process that requires a computerized embroidery machine and has a really pristine perfect look.
BUT
There is something beautiful and meditative in the process of hand sewing. As an artist the process is as important as the creative results, as is developing skills.

I suppose if one wants to get into mass production like Takashi Murakami then a machine is an excellent idea. There is some amazing digitized embroidery out there.
BUT
If one just has to download an image into the computer then anybody can do it, right!
Unless of course they create their own designs or artwork, but are the stitches on the machine limited so that all the embroidery has a uniform look? I can't seem to find info on how many stitch options there are on machines ( I did find this video on how to plot stitches for an image).
Here is some info about Machines and on top of the machine it looks like you would have to buy the software to digitize the images. From what I am reading about machine embroidery it would require a fairly expensive machine plus the software to do more complex images and a lot of time on the computer working it out.
I already spend too much time on the computer eek!
Back to the studio
and
Hands On

By the way the embroidery world is not without it's own drama and conflicts with copyright.
What do you think?