Buttonhole flowers

I stitched these buttonhole flowers for my 4-year-old nephew.


While I was stitching, he sat beside me, watched me stitching over, helped me select the threads, and asked a lot of questions. It was fun working with him around. However, I never finished this. You can see the leaves are not done....

Sweet Pea --- Almost Done

I am almost done with the sweet pea project.



Leaves are done, however a quarter of a leaf is pending. One flower is to be stitched. I left it unstitched and started embroidering the leaves. Now, I am going to stitch the remaining petals of the flower, the stems, and the tendrils. Planning to finish it today.

My progress so far

This is my progress so far in the sweet pea embroidery project.



My thanks to Mary Corbet for her tips on long and short stitch on her website Needle'nThread.com. Am an ardent follower of her website. My long and short shading usually looks bad. But after reading her tips on needle painting and articles about Trish Burr, I started learning this technique quite seriously. I know that I have not achieved a great success in long and short embroidery techniques, but I could see some improvement at least.

Okay, bye. I will keep you posted....

Sweet pea update

I am done with the second flower out of the four flowers in the bunch. Here is the image:

Free Decorative Embroidery PDF Pattern

Today I would like to share a free embroidery pattern which I created. This motif will look attractive when stitched as a repeated design along the edges of curtains, table cloths, or skirts. You can also embroider it on bibs, tote bags, cushion covers, or even t-shirts. Here is the pattern:



This is just a rough sketch which I drew just 20 mins before.

Here is the one I drew using the graphic software, to give you some color ideas.

Suggestions for the stitches to be used:

For the flower center use, french knots or satin stitch. For the layer around the center, use buttonhole or satin stitch of contrast color, or you can fill it with two rows of stem stitch or chain stitch. The leaf-like petals can be stitched with satin stitch. I you want to have two color shades you can fill it up with long and short. You can also just outline the pattern with chain stitch or back stitch. 

Sew a shisha mirror at the center and beads arround the leaves or inside the leaves for an embellished look.

PDF pattern download link:

Free Decorative Embroidery Pattern   


I have not tried this design yet. However, if you try this, please send your work to this email id: flora.flowers.boo@gmail.com. I would be happy to show your work to others.

Also follow up with the upcoming posts. I have plans to provide a lot of free designs. I will update on the progress of my sweet pea project tomorrow. Happy stitching. Have fun.

Embroidered sweet peas

Hi all, am doing an interesting project using long-and-short embroidery which is also known as needlepainting. I am embroidering a bunch of four sweet peas ( 3 pinks and 1 violet) on a cushion cover. Here is the design I used:



And here is the picture of the first flower, the violet one:



I don't think that the flower has come out perfectly, but I like the color combination. What do you say? :-)

I would like to share my knowledge on needlepainting with you all in my forthcoming posts. I will post pictures of how my work progresses. Wish you all good luck for the new year.