Our FIRST FLOWER gets to be stitched (finally!)

We’ll start these flowers with the satin stitch - the most popular and versatile stitch (I made that up, but its probably true).

While I shared my videos for satin stitch and blending with split stitches in the last stitchalong (linked in purple for your convenience) I want to cover ways of creating dimension with your satin stitches that are specific to flowers. 

These rules do not apply to all flowers - use your best judgement based on your chosen blooms!

First off, decide if you’d rather go with a style where the zones of color are clearly segmented, a more graphic style; or if you want a more painterly style with splitting stitches.

The flowers above illustrate the differences in these styles. While these are both illustrating a rose head on, both of these styles could also be used to describe a flower from different angles as well.

No matter which of these methods you choose (or if you choose some other third or fourth method that I didn’t share here), the following tips will help create dimension within your petals.

Look closely at the below photo of a flower. We can easily see that on most of the petals, the colors go from light at the outer edges of the petal, to dark at the center.

But if we look closer, we can see the light-to-dark color change is happening in a way that follows the curve of the outer edge of the flower (highlighted in light blue).

This curved shading makes it easier to distinguish one petal from another since the lighter edges of the petals contrast against the darker edges of the petals underneath them. 

Below, this method of curved shading shown on two different types of petals. The left shows this method using the graphic style, the right shows this method using the painterly style. 

Using this method, the three dimensional forms of the flower can be more clearly interpreted when looking at your finished bloom.

This even works for smaller petals, like these sunflowers (you’ll see how these petals were stitched in the next session!)

Let’s revisit the two styles of roses at the top of this email - while the graphic style clearly illustrates this curved change in color, the painterly style does this in a more subtle way.

For one, the petals are not all the same (an important feature to notice if you’re going for a more realistic look) but if you look closely, the curved shading still exists on each and every petal at different levels.

To put this in a different way, the more painterly you want your flower to look, the more likely each petal will be a completely different organization of colors. 

Don’t feel like you need to use all the colors of the light to dark range on each petal - in fact, your blooms will probably feel more dimensional if some petals are mostly darker, and others mostly lighter shades (see areas pointed out above).

While working with the graphic style means you want to have your color placement planned out before stitching, the painterly style gives you the opportunity to revise as you go - if you don’t like the specific light to dark fade of a petal, you can simply stitch on top of the existing stitches and cover them with a new color.

Some flower petals, like the marigold above, may seem to be all one color. You may choose to:

• push the lights and darks to provide more contrast
• illustrate the flower in a graphic way that allows the distinction between petals to be easily seen (like leaving the dark background to be seen between petals)
• outline the edges of each petal with a contrasting thread color (I recommend splitting your thread down to two or three strands when outlining details of petals)

The below example felt like it was too subtle of a transition between petal colors, so here I am adding a high contrast outline.

Your flower may not go from dark at the center and light at the petals - like the rose below, which is deeper at the tips of the petals and lighter at the center (with a little bit of shading at the center; noted in the color palette on the right).

I’d simply invert the color recommendations here, using the same techniques but reversing the colors.

So here’s a quick checklist of what we learned today:

• define your petals using a graphic or painterly style
• follow the curve of the petal to create your light-to-dark color
• graphic style color transition - perfect your light-to-dark fade ahead of time
• painterly style color transition - colors can be stitched on top to edit light-to-dark fade as you go
• define your petal shape - use a higher contrast light-to-dark fade, allow the background to show between petals, or outline with a contrasting thread color
• for petals that go from dark on the edge to light at the center, simply invert these rules

Hope this helps support your practice, and I look forward to seeing your blooms take form! #enchantedbloomsstitchalong