While We're Waiting -- More Flowers from An Artist's Garden

A while back I started sharing Brazilian dimensional embroidery flowers from my book, An Artist's Garden, so you could have a color reference for the designs.

This is the Treasure Flower or Gazania (also called African Daisy). The photo of this flower is courtesy of MissouriBotanicalGarden.org:

I thought of an interesting and uncomplicated way to add the little dark spots at the base of each petal, so have added it to several of my Millefiori designs. Here's a sample:



 

This is the design from An Artist's Garden (above).

I like to stitch this little Glory Bee!! whenever I can  - it's made with black Glory bullions, gold Glory or metallic-thread bullions, and the Millefiori Knotted Loop Stitch for wings. It's less than 1/2" long:

 

In the second photo above, I used 2-3 straight stitches when I used metallic thread for the gold stripes.  By the way, my favorite gold thread is the DMC gold that I find at JoAnn Stores in their craft department -- it's on a spool and has 3 strands woven together, and is very durable.

 

Grapes:

I named this technique "Lazy Tendrils" (formerly known as Travelin' Tendrils). These are made with elongated lazy daisy stitches, easy as pie. You can add them to any design just by practicing your penmanship (lower case, cursive letter "e") with a wash out pen.

 

Grasshopper:

And, because they are good for you, green beans:

Here are a couple more -- a hellebore

...and a hollyhock.

If you study these flowers (double click to enlarge), you'll see none are too intricate - these are fairly easy stitches and the traceable patterns are pretty simple. Throughout An Artist's Garden, whenever I had space on a page, I dreamed up a little design using more flowers from the book and other simple stitches. Like this:

This is a California wildflower design - I've posted the California poppy previously, and the lupine is coming soon.

 

To finish this session of blatant subliminal advertising, here is a picture of the back cover of An Artist's Garden. I call it "Formal Garden":

Rosalie