Now for our accents!

be sure to download the PDF from the last session, detailing how the above blooms were made, if you haven't already!  

Dot and dashes - the French knot and the straight stitch composed the most basic forms of flowers.

The French knot is one of the more difficult stitches to learn, the straight stitch is basically as simple as it gets.

What they have in common is how much their aesthetic can be effected by switching up thread thickness, so splitting the thread down to fewer strands (read more on splitting your thread here)

https://www.mixedcolor.net/french-knot

The texture of the french knot is created by wrapping the thread around the needle; this can be wrapped once, twice, or even many more times - the more you wrap the thread, the bigger the knot will be.

These are great for the little dots of pollen at the center of the flower (does this part of a flower have a more scientifically accurate name? Probably) as seen in the magnolia flower below, as well as the purple center on the yellow daisy just below. 

All of the french knots in this embroidery are made using a single wrap around the needle with six strands of embroidery floss

Even though when we look at a plant with clusters of tiny flowers, we can see the flowers very close together, we don’t always need to stitch it that way.

Here’s an example of french knots used for a wormwood plant (artemesia absinthium) by allowing plenty of space between the stitches, the knots create a lacey texture that allows the blooms to really pop off the black background.

(The foliage has been created with a mix of stem stitch, detached chain stitches, and straight stitches)

On the opposite end of the spectrum, this amaranth plant (made for Hudson Valley Seed Co) is created with french knots that are extremely close together.

I used three different colors of thread to give it some dimensional shading - a bright gold, a deeper copper, and a hot pink (because I love fuschia and I get to create the blooms I want to see)

STRAIGHT STITCH 

This is seemingly so simple, but there is so so much potential to the most basic stitch expression!

You can overlap straight stitches, you can add straight stitches on top of other stitches, like filling in the hole of a detached chain stitch with a different color straight stitch.

 (below, an example of overlapping stitches from a vintage embroidery book - these are single stranded, extra long detached chain stitches)

Below, a test embroidery for a larger custom design. At the time, I was not a fan of french knots (clearly this was before the amaranth embroidery above!) 

 I tried these yarrow flowers in straight stitches - the yellow center was a cluster of two or three small stitches, and the petals were a free-for-all of tiny straight stitches (I also played with detached chain stitches here), even adding a little bit of “spray” at the top left to allow the form to feel a little more lacey.

The foliage is also straight stitches. Though I played with feather stitches, fly stitches - which we’ll go over in a later session - and all sorts of other kinds, I ended up going with these simple straight stitch arrangements

The above straight stitches are made with three strands, though if I were working with a delicately petaled flower like a chamomile or aster, I might, knowing what I do now, go with one strand.

Below, the same general composition in various thread thicknesses. I obviously was a little sloppy on the 6 strand example, but thats because its actually quite difficult to get precise on a small scale with six strands!

Think of it like trying to draw detail with a Sharpie. If you’re like me and have spend the better part of your stitching practice avoiding splitting strands, I will continue to hint at you “try it, you’ll like it!”

Next session we’ll move into foliage!