Designs by Diligence: Black Eyed Susans

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Finding Inspiration In Nature

An Embroidery Tutorial

Don't you love all the flowers coming up. The Peonies down the street make me swoon, my favorite tiger lilies bloomed at the church next to us, and maybe the best thing is that the Black Eyed Susan's have popped up in my yard. I just could not resist stitching them up.

I might have to take more pictures as their seeds come in and stitch them up with lots and lots of french knots in the middle.

For now I want to take you through the steps of what I did to make this necklace happen. By the way, it is my daughter's last day of school tomorrow, and this beautiful necklace is going to her teacher, who has called my daughter Sunshine a few times. I thought this would be the perfect gift to remind her of the sunshine in her life.

First I drew out the rough design of what I wanted with a heat sensitive pen

Then I added the center stitches. I went with straight stitches, starting in the middle and working my way outwards. Starting with the light color first.

I worked 1 layer of woven picot petals equally around the center.

After the 8 petals, I went back through and filled in 6 more woven picot petals between the first set of petals.

I made 2 more woven picot petals in green for leaves. Then I chose 3 colors of green and filled in the background with the fishtail stitch and long stitches at random. When I was happy with the back ground I tacked down some of the picot petals in the positions that I wanted then to stay.