Images of realistic-looking crocheted potted flowers, made of cotton thread by stay-at-home mom Liu Sunqiu of Chongqing, went viral online recently.

The exquisite "blooming" flowers included sunflowers, daisies and hydrangeas.

Liu, who was born in Chongqing's Jiangjin district in 1993, showed keen interest in painting as a child. She said she taught herself to crochet using online tutorials in 2019, when she was pregnant and eager to find ways to kill time.

"Crocheting is easy, but shaping is hard," she said, adding that her early works failed. She came up with the idea of making potted flowers. To make her creations vivid, she brought real flowers home and observed them closely.

Her work of sunflowers, with a total of 10 flowers and 60 leaves, took her about seven months to complete.

"The work turned out to be stunning and has given me a great sense of achievement," she said.

Liu finished another four pieces of crocheted flowers, and has won more than 290,000 fans and 121,000 likes on China's short-video platform Douyin.

She said she is planning to do more with her craft. She envisions doing galsang flowers, triangle plum and lotus in the near future.