Tuesday, August 2, 2022

Sunflowers for the Stitchalong

This week's stitching on my Peace for Ukraine project is the sunflower - that's where I started in on the florals. It's really lovely; two layers of petals in two tones of yellow, with an outline stitch, and some details in the base of the petals. 

The petals are all done in satin stitch. I started out on the inner petals, carefully filling them in the way that Natalie shows in her stitchalong video. But as I went along I realized I could save a little thread by switching to a stitch I've seen called "Mexican Satin Stitch" (not sure why). Instead of moving your needle up and down across the space you're filling, which essentially gives you full coverage front and back, the adapted stitch has your needle going from top to bottom, then up again right beside where you just went down, and so on. This means the front looks like satin stitch, and the back is a series of little discrete stitches. Much less thread. 


Using this stitch necessitates careful placement of your needle, though, as you don't want gaps in the satin stitch coverage. I found it worked well with this project, and finished up my petals this way. I did find that my coverage on the sides of the petals wasn't as complete as the pattern was; I should have added a few more small stitches to round out each petal. But I think it's good enough and looks great once the outline stitches and the shading details have been added. I really love it!

Next up: more french knots!! What else could you possibly use to fill in the centre of a sunflower. More chance to practice my technique I guess ;) 




2 comments:

  1. Colonial knots? I think that's the knot we used to do for candlewick embroidery, in the 1980s. Bullion knot would also be a good choice for seedy sunflowers.

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    1. Colonial knots would also be a good choice! I can imagine some tightly spaced bullions too. Although probably not made by me, I'm terrible at those, haha!

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