Floral Fabric Sampler

I’m done! Finished this a few days ago but just finally took photos of it yesterday. Here’s the whole sampler:

I plan to frame it in that hoop, but I haven’t yet – I just tucked the excess fabric behind the back for the photo.

I thought the dragonfly would be a fun addition. He’s mostly chain-stitched, with some stem stitch (my default stitch) and fern stitch on his wings. The wings were done with a single strand of floss – great for adding delicacy to a piece.

That’s DMC color variations floss, which I love.

From outside in: Blue french knots, purple stem stitch, gold seeding, purple and gold whipped backstitch.

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I went over the details on the flower earlier – we have couched trellis, split stitch, back stitch and stem stitch. The stem is more whipped backstitching; the leaves were done in stem and fern stitch like the dragonfly wings.

The little purple and gold teardrop shape was done in a double blanket stitch (outside) and backstitch (inside).

The flower: pink stem stitch on the outside, with straight stitches meeting the rhodes circular stitch in the middle. Gold chinese knots on the petals. The trailing circles are done in gold coral stitch and dark blue french knots.

You’ll see coral stitch again in the paisley shape here. The floral here is filled with a blue buttonhole wheel; straight stitches make the petals, and back stitch outlines it all. I really like this one. The trailing circles were filled with something called a moss stitch in purple.

This was such a fun project to do. I feel like I learned a lot, and yet it was largely unplanned and more of a feeling thing – going through my embroidery book and looking for appropriate stitches to use; trying to challenge myself and learn more. I don’t know how often I will use some of these stitches, but I did learn coral stitch and can see myself using that in the future. Also, the chinese knots came out a little tighter than the french knots – I am more at ease with french knot, but can definitely see myself revisiting this other type of knot.