Dogrose: Embroidered heart shaped wreath

dogrose floral heart embroidery


When you love flowers and love embroidery, sooner or later a heart shaped floral wreath will bloom on your fabric. Guess it was inevitable :)

This embroidery is one of my older pieces, together with Winter anemones wreath, Pink poppies and Crewel Heart. My veteran works :) This one was stitched last summer, inspired by the beautiful dogrose bushes sharing their splendid fragrance in the air.

dogrose floral heart embroidery

Actually, today while having a walk I enjoyed quite a few dogrose shrubs – bees already greedily feast themselves on the flowers. Every time I pass by dogrose bushes I always smell them and I recommend everyone do the same. You won't regret. Their delicious scent will put you in the right mood for the whole day: that summer romantic mood when you feel light and smile for no particular reason as you walk in the street.

dogrose floral heart embroidery

This embroidered piece is quite straightforward without any peculiar stitches or techniques. The branches include leaves stitched in satin stitch with a different length of stitches to create a rugged edge and a stem worked in stem stitch.

dogrose floral heart embroidery

While stitching stems I alternated the side from which the needle would emerge in the stem stitch – above the previous stitch or below it. Therefore the look of the lines sometimes is “ropy” and sometime is more wholesome, like a liana.

dogrose floral heart embroidery

The buds are primarily worked in satin stitch.

dogrose floral heart embroidery

And the flowers are worked in long and short stitch using one color of floss. It is pale blush, on the border to peach puff. Never actually seen dogrose of this color and I doubt it exists. Somehow when I was choosing thread it appeared pink to me (maybe something was off with the lighting?). I noticed that the color is closer to peachy after I already started stitching and... decided to leave it like that. It sort of grants a bit of vintage air to the embroidery, as if the color faded off. I liked the calm mood this toned down floss created.

The brown stem stitched lines help to distinguish between the petals and create a sort of shade. The berries are stitched in padded satin stitch.

dogrose floral heart embroidery

Flowers' centers are executed using padded satin stitch and pistil french knots of varied length.


The design was first drawn in crayons, then traced on the computer, transferred to the fabric and stitched. As always, the drawing is a bit different from the final embroidery. The leaves got darker, the flowers are paler, there also weren't any berries at first. They grew themselves, haha. I love how the embroidery pieces carve themselves out and set themselves apart and independent from the initial sketches, acquiring their own mood and character :)  Does it happen with your designs too?

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Next week I'm planning to share some vintage embroidery books that can be downloaded or read online, as well as the third lesson for buttonhole stitch - now for using it as a filler. If you missed the previous two lessons check them here: buttonhole basics and buttonhole variations.

So, till next time! Hope you have a great stitching weekend!  

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