Let’s start off with an old project – hand embroidery was what started my journey towards quilting, in a roundabout way. 🙂 This is a project I made for my mom for her office. I used Namaste Embroidery’s tutorial for double hoops to make the wreath shape. I had done some simple embroidery before, but this was my first project that I planned out by myself (with PowerPoint!). I wanted to use different kinds of stitches to make petals and create different shapes, and link them with little baby flowers and leaves.

I used stitches I had done before but in different ways – a lazy daisy stitch is usually used as a line or small petals with a common center (see off to the right, those light green petals and dark green stem are also lazy daisy stitch). I wanted to make bigger petals that were reminiscent of sunflowers, so I made the lazy daisy into more of a triangle shape. The wagon wheel is always a great flower center, and I stitched it by putting different colored strands together to make a new thread.

I really like the look of pistil stitch, and I varied the number of french knots on the end throughout the petals. French knots have great texture and I liked using them in two different ways on these flowers.

I like these flowers, but it was my first real usage of satin stitch. I think if I did it again, I’d use lazy daisy stitch or even backstitching with a larger thread size to fill in the space. It ended up being tedious, but it turned out nice.

Project completed March 2, 2018