Stitching by Ann Bernard
An assortment of gardens picked at random. It is amazing how creative stitchers can be when they have the information and the inclination.
The half price offer on my ebooks ends on Wednesday, January 15, 2020 at 12.00 EST (noon).
Post a comment and I will send you the download code for this offer. There are two ebooks,
Hand stitch Recognizable Spring Flowers and Hand stitch Recognizable Summer Flowers.
Offer ends on Wednesday, January 15 2020 at 12.00, noon EST
Hand Stitch Recognizable Summer Flowers is another book that is full of ‘tricks of the trade’. It features another 23 flowering plants that use a variety of basic stitches in creative ways. There is nothing very difficult to any of this, it is just ‘knowing how to go about it.’ As you will see, from the two flowers/plants excerpted from the book, that, once you know how. it is just a matter of doing it.
You will realise from previous blogs, that the plants and flowers can be used in any way you wish.
Lavender, Delphinium, Veronica and Liatris are all worked in Herringbone Stitch.
Lavender is a bushy plant with long, delicate stems and leaves. The blue/mauve flowers form long spikes with a knobby texture. It looks to be related to Veronica but the structure and colour of the leaves are different.
Stalks and Leaves: Green 988 (2). Flowers: Blue/Mauve 340 (1) + 210 (1) = 2.
Stalks: Stitch some stalks in Straight Stitch adding a few shorter straight stitches as leaves to fill out the base of the plant. Add some flowers to the stalks. Create bends or curves in the stalks by displacing the stalk to one side with the point of an awl or with another needle. This is done while the flower spikes are being stitched. Add until a lavender bush of the size and shape you wish is achieved
Flowers: Use one thread each of the blue and light mauve. Stitch with Open Herringbone stitch. Start at the upper end of the stalk and cover the desired length of the stem. Note that the stitching is narrow in width and that the stem forms padding for the flower spike. Start stitching just above the tip of the stem, or start slightly below the tip for a flower spike that is not yet fully open.
Water Garden, stitched by Ann Bernard (original is 4″ x 6″)
Lavender, Veronica, and Alyssum are featured in this garden.
Purple Coneflower
The Purple Coneflower grows in clumps and reaches a height between 2′ and 4′. It blooms from mid summer into the autumn. Each flower opens with pink/purple petals and a flat centre similar to a Shasta Daisy. As the flower ages and the seeds in the centre ripen, the petals droop down to become vertical and the centre becomes larger and domed, eventually becoming cone shaped. One plant can have flowers in different stages of development. The birds and bees love this plant.
Stalks: Green 987 (6).
Leaves: Green 702 (2) + 988 (1) + 987 (1) = 4.
Petals: Pink 3609 (2), 3608 (3), 3607 (1). Explained in Petal directions.
Centres: Brown 433 (1) + 938 (1) = 2. Orange 721 (1 doubled in the needle) = 2.
Stalks: Using long Straight stitch the centres of each of the flowers with a small Cross stitch in either of the two brown threads.
Petals: Stitch a few Straight stitch petals in each bloom using 3609 (2). Add more petals using 3608 (3). Note that the petals are uneven in length and that the petals are darker towards the centre of the flower. Overstitch the base of the petals with one thread of 3607.
Centres: 433 (1) + 938 (1) + 721 (1) = 3. Overstitch a few horizontal Straight stitches across the central brown Cross stitch. Using 721(1) doubled in the needle = 2, overstitch a few French Knots on the centres using a fine needle for this such as a Crewel 9 or 10.
Leaves: 702 (2) + 987 (1) + 988 (1) = 4. Detached Chain stitch with the catch stitch towards the stalks of the plant. The upper leaves are stitched with 702 (2) + 988 (1) = 3. The foliage on this plant is fairly dense with the leaves being an oval with a point at the tip of the leaf. The angles of the leaves vary considerably.
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And then there are the Dandelions which is the most looked at photo on this blog. Stitching these is so easy it took a genius to figure it out!!!
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Most, but not all of the gardens are stitched on medium weight quilting cotton that has been photo printed. The instructions for this are included in the book.
The flowers are divided into stitch groups such as Herringbone, French Knots, Detached Chain, Straight etc. To interpret each flower, the stitch is adapted in a specific way.
Preparation of the fabric, photo printing, finishing and mounting the completed piece on foam core board are all included in the book. This makes it an ideal book for technical reference as well as for creative use of stitches. Experienced, as well as new stitchers, will find valuable information included in both books.
For a short time only, send me a comment and I will send you the code for a half price download of this ebook.
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Happy New Year. Ann
The New Year, and a new decade. Happy New Year to everyone!
For you and for your stitching friends, here is the deal. Read this blog, make a comment, and you will receive a code that will allow you to download my ebook on Hand Stitch Recognizable Spring Flowers for half price. To help you decide that this is essential/desirable information, here is a peek at the contents of the book.
Framed by Indalo of Fergus, Ontario. Gone to a new home as a gift.
As well as discovering how to stitch 23 different spring flowers, trees and bushes, the book includes basic stitching information that I have seldom, or never, found in other books. Which is why I have included it in my books. Not everyone is born knowing how to embroider; some of us have to learn.
Preparation, is vitally important. Good stitching skills do not achieve excellent results without the basic essentials being correct. You will find fabric preparation, choosing and mounting it on a frame, choosing the right needle size, threading it, starting and ending threads. All the flowers, bushes and trees are stitched using four stitches and variations. They are – Straight, Detached Chain, Buttonhole and French Knots.
It is amazing what can created by using simplicity — creatively!
It is all here in this book and none of it is difficult. Read this book, get out your imagination and stitch. Or, read this book and use it to create a garden of your choice. This is how most stitchers use the information.
First, A Review.
I can thoroughly recommend Ann Bernard’s Stitching Idyllic for Spring Flowers. Ann brings her training at the Royal School of Needlework to the fore by devising a whole new way of embroidering spring flowers with ordinary cotton floss.
Her method of combining different hues of 4 or 6 strands at a time for flower stems and flower heads results in lovely raised effects which make the effort of stranding (which I originally thought tedious) very worthwhile, and gives the impression of many stitches whereas your one bold and stranded stitch is fully expressive by itself. This technique for the flowers and stems – which aims for true colours in nature – at once gives a wonderful shaded and depth effect.
I’ve been an embroiderer for many decades and I was delighted with the results I achieved just doing a practice piece. Using only her techniques, I then embarked on an embroidery, of my own composition of spring flowers. Her directions ‘take you by the hand’ and lead you through flower sizes, growing habit, and colour to make them quite realistic. I completed my own piece of work without my usual agonies as a result, and I was very pleased to produce recognizable flowers. The directions are thorough and the diagrams very descriptive.
I would recommend this book for any stitcher whether novice or experienced, as there is much to learn for very pleasing results.
Sincerely, Edna Mumford
An excerpt from the book.
Threads: Stranding (Stripping), Mixing, and Saving:
The thread used is DMC Six Stranded Floss. Using the correctly coloured thread for the flowers and leaves in your final garden is vital. This conveys the identity of the plant and flower to the viewer. Form and perspective can be distorted but the colour has to be correct. This requires a large number of different threads but, except for the greens, very little is used of most of them. While experimenting on your sampler, any yellow will suffice to try out the technique for daffodil blooms. There is a Thread Conversion list at the end of this book.
Further Prevention of Tangles:
To pull a length of thread from a skein of DMC thread, hold the skein at the wrapper that has no colour number. One pull will give you about 12″ of thread, which is a convenient length for stitching on your sampler. Two pulls will give you a length that is relevant for stitching your final garden. The leaves and stalks use up a lot of thread.
Refer to the photograph below, noting that:
It can be difficult when you have your thread wound onto a card but this should help you decide which end is which. Thread is made of two strands twisted together. It can be hard to impossible to thread a needle against the twist. If all else fails, try threading the other end. Self threading needles are available. A Needle Threader is a useful tool but do use the finest needle you can thread for stitching. The quality of your work will be higher.
STRAND, or STRIP, YOUR THREAD. They are the same thing no matter where you live.
This is of profound importance and is a wise habit to develop. It creates a stitching thread that is untwisted and maximizes fabric coverage. It will achieve a much improved finished product and may decrease the number of stitches you need to make.
How to stitch one of the 23 flowers included in this book.
Daffodils
The bright yellow of King Alfred Daffodils makes them the most familiar variety of the daffodils. As our goal is to create plants and flowers that are instantly recognizable, we will stitch bright yellow daffodils. Note that a daffodil has long straight leaves and stalks, and that the flowers have six petals and a trumpet. We will stitch them frontal view for now. Later, we will return to daffodils and add curved and bent leaves and the flowers in side view.
Green: 320, 987, 989, 895. Yellow: 444, or 307, or 973. Gold: 972.
Leaves and Stalks (fig. 1 below): Use 2 threads each of 320 and 987 and 1 thread each of 989 and 895. These 6 threads of green are now stranded and mixed and make a blend of greens more like daffodil leaves and stalks than any one of them would be if used on its own. Stitch a few Straight stitches to indicate some stalks. The stalks need to be in proportion to the flowers and are about 1″ long in the sample pictured below. Start in the centre and stitch stalks first towards one side and then stitch the other side. Take the short cut between the stalks on the reverse of the fabric as in the diagram (this is the procedure for all the stalks for every plant). Store that thread by bringing it to the front of the fabric a short distance away.
Flowers: Four threads of any of the yellow threads, stranded but unmixed, to stitch the flowers.
Triangle Stitch: Stitch the inside triangle first with stitches about ¼” long (Fig. 2). Add the second and third triangles outside the first one (Fig. 3). Overstitch a Reverse Triangle the same size as the last triangle (Fig. 4). Note that the points of the reverse triangles are midway along the sides of the first triangles. Increase or decrease the number of the triangles to alter the size of the flower.
(Overstitch – stitch on top of previous stitching). Stitch a few flowers at the top of the stalks (Fig. 7). Store that thread and retrieve the green one. Add some more stalks to your plant or group of plants. Then, retrieve the yellow thread and add more flowers. Continue until you have enough flowers to please you. Using the same green thread, add more Straight stitches to fill out the plant with leaves. The leaves of daffodils grow taller than the flowers. Add a few short Straight stitches above the flowers to indicate this. Add more Straight stitches to fill out the plant with leaves.
These diagrams make stitching Daffodils look difficult. It is not. Just place Straight stitches as indicated and you will have no problem. It does take a little practice to make the flower the size and shape you wish, but that is why you have tried them first on your sampler.
Centres: Gold 972 using 1 or 2 threads. Overstitch a small reverse triangle in gold thread for the trumpet of the daffodil (Fig. 5). Your sampler does not have to be a completed work of art. Stitch enough of each plant and flower so that you know how the stitches work, the length of stalks and leaves, how the flowers are created, and how their size can be altered. Once you know this flower, move on to the next plant, Narcissi.
Stitched size is 1 3/4″ wide x 1 3/4″ high.
If you have started reading this book here at Daffodils, you have cheated yourself out of a wealth of information. The earlier sections include the ‘tricks of the trade’. This is a short cut to being an experienced stitcher without spending years to actually become one.
Write a comment on Spring Flowers and I will send you the Code for one half price, copy of this ebook. It will be available for a limited time only.