I understood from them that it would be ok to embroider a sacred image in the style of an icon, that wouldn't be disrespectful, but it would not be an icon. And icon has to be 'written' (painted) in a certain way by people trained to do so, with the permission and blessing of a priest. For more on the theology of icons, Wiki seems decent to me. So although the embroidery below is in the style of an icon, it it not an icon.
My embroidery shows the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Theotokos - God-bearer - with the infant Christ. The image of the Blessed Virgin is based on Greek and Byzantine icons, with the defined outline of the features, long nose and almond eyes. She's wearing red as that's how she's portrayed in icons, which was a surprise to me - I'm used tot he western depiction of Mary in blue. I based the infant Christ on a Chinese nativity picture of the early C20th I saw in the Church Times, where he almost looks like a little Buddha. I like the way he looks like a baby, not like a mini-adult, which is how he seems to be shown in a lot of icons. Here's my first sketch for the embroidery:
The final embroidery measures 17cm by 13cm, and was done primarily in long and short stitch, with a bit of back stitch and satin stitch. I used couched gold thread for the halos, with a sightly smaller gauge thread for the infant Christ's halo.
