Primrose botanical embroidery: freebie & tutorial

Time for a new miniature tutorial! Who's ready to stitch a lovely Primrose? :)

This month we are stitching few easy-peasy spring flowers as miniatures for a bit of embroidering practice. This way seasoned stitchers can flex their muscles during a quick session, and beginners have a great chance to start with something small but still valuable. You need bricks to build a wall. And you can use multiple quick stitching practices to get used to embroidery and get a hang of it.

Here is the full list of tutorials from this project:

1. Mimosa
2. Cotton flower
3. Lavender
4. Primrose
5. Tulip
6. Wisteria

As I warned in the previous post, the Primrose design might actually take you longer than the ones we stitched before. Because now we get to work long and short stitch here, and it usually takes a bit more time, especially if you are a beginner.

No worries, though! It is still a miniature so you will finish it quickly :)

Here's the hero of today's tutorial:

It is a bit quirky and fun, but so cute! Is it just me, or the flowers look curious, as if they are peeking out?

I didn't see them like that when I sketched the designs, to be honest. That's always the most fun part of embroidering: when your design starts living on its own and gets a tangible character!

Anyway, let's start with the tutorial! Catch the PDF pattern at the end of the post.

Primrose embroidery tutorial

1. We start by working the stem in 1 strand of floss. I'm using split stitch here, but you can also use stem stitch or back stitch or any other line stitch you like for that matter.

(Also don't mind the ominous-looking needle, it's not really black, it's just the light angle)

2. I used fishbone stitch to work the leaves. The right one is pretty simple to work thanks to its simple shape. The left one, however, might be a bit more tricky, but it just requires shorter stitches.

3. Time for the main part! We work the petals of these flowers with long and short stitching, making an outline first, then put few guiding stitches that help us to stick to the right direction of stitches, and then complete the row. I used split back stitch for the outline, as it is easier when the line is a little ragged.

In some petals, I added few extra stitches of the same color as the second row (see the complete petal to the right in the picture above).

Don't forget to vary the length of your stitches to make the filling smoother.

4. Throwing in a brighter orange color for the base of the petals. It is okay that the colors don't blend 100%, because that's not really the effect we need here. The colors are too far from each other anyway (we talked about color blending here). Just make sure the stitches vary in length and there aren't too many of them for this color – just enough to cover the gaps.

5. A french knot (or a colonial knot, alternatively) for the center of the flower.

6. And lastly, the little blossom! I worked the receptacle as a couple of parallel short split stitch lines. And the petals can be worked simply as few straight stitches.

And that's all! Your primrose is complete!

It is a bit more complicated than the previous miniatures, but we have to try various things in these practice sessions, don't we?

DOWNLOAD THE PATTERN

Anyway, the result is totally worth the effort! By the way, I can totally see this cutie as a decoration for clothes – on a shirt pocket or jeans for example. Ah, I really want to try embroidering on my clothes sometime, it would be a first for me :)

So, next time we will stitch a tulip! It is going to contain some long and short stitching again, beware :) See you!