Embroidered flowers

I picked up a book called The Art of Embroidered Flowers from the "free" table at my quilt guild meeting a couple of months ago.

It was written by Gilda Baron, who I googled and found out she had recently died.  There are several YouTube videos out there that she had done, showing demonstrations of her techniques, and this book is wonderful.  I'm sure most of you already have all the materials necessary to try some of these techniques.

I had already painted some pieces a few years ago using an assortment of Dynaflow and Jacquard fabric paints, so I dug them out and finally put them to use for this project:

First I drew some lines using fabric markers:

And of course heat set with an iron.

For a backing, the book recommended just using batting (wadding) but I have found it not to be stiff enough in the past, so I used some pretty heavy pellon interfacing.  I didn't use a hoop, but some people feel more comfortable using one, it's really not necessary if your stabilizer is sturdy.  

Then I started free motion stitching some lines to suggest grasses using an assortment of threads (rayon, cotton, polyester):

For the blue background, I painted some bubble wrap with purple paint then pressed it onto the fabric, then stitched some vertical lines: 

And finished them both off with some simple hand stitching, mostly french knots and flowers.

There was some minor puckering on these, so I asked my friend Jenny Williams (an extraordinary thread sketcher) what I could use for backing to eliminate some of that problem.  She suggested regular cotton duck, so I tried that for my next ones.  It was a lot easier to do hand stitching through than trying to get a needle through the pellon.

Also, if you're doing a lot of lines, it's smarter to add some zigzag stitches in first, as they fill up the background a whole lot faster than straight lines do.

Here are two more simple techniques from the book, using a zigzag stitch to suggest a flower like delphiniums or larkspur:

And cutting out  some little circles, which I glued to the piece before stitching--

Then took to my machine and made a quick series of zigzags which I later clipped--

With some french knots added:

And I tried out a different stitch for foliage here:

Just need to add a few french knots--

Next time I'll show you an easy way to finish them for framing.