March Round-Up

Here's everything that happened in March on Stitch Floral blog, and also a sneak peek to plans for April!

How was your March?

I fell sick for half of the month which slowed down my productivity inevitably. And when I thought I recovered, I fell sick again, haha. I'm usually quite the tough cookie and stay unaffected during winter, however, this time flu was stronger.

Round-up

The good news is that I still managed to finish the new designs! Jewel Series that you got the preview of at the beginning of March. You've seen the Amber design ( I have more pictures in my Instagram) and I also showed you the draft which you could use to guess how the second flower would look like. Now you can see the final result in the title picture!

Frankly speaking, this flower totally does NOT take a whole month to stitch, I swear. I literally whipped up the stem and the flower itself during 2-3 evenings – and that's considering I took pictures of each my step!

It's the frame that took so long and only because of my flu and some other issues. It is indeed a quite tedious process to work the frame with such a dense seed stitching. Although the final result is worth it, if you ask me!

For me, it took around two evenings for each side of the frame, which means ~8 evenings for the full frame. So you see, a week and a half for the whole piece is the ideal period of completing. Possibly even less if you spend more time stitching each day and don't take pictures of the process.

However, you can save some time and simply make seed stitch not as dense as here. But more like in Amber design – it looks just as pretty and takes twice as less time.

Anyway, the question is: can you guess which jewel stone inspired this design? The yellow flower is inspired by Amber. And the pink one? Hmmmm... I wonder about your thoughts!

Both designs will go on sale very soon, please look forward to them!

In March we also learned a couple of new techniques. Basic Lattice work and Lattice work variations, to be precise. I really love these techniques and hope to include them more often in my embroidery work. Lattice is especially fun because you can create a lot of differen patterns changing some elements and colors. Truly an inexhaustible source of joy for any stitcher :)

Find all of the stitch tutorials in the Stitch Library!

We also polished our needlepainting skills once more with Needlepainting tips part 8: Importance of correct direction. A very needed topic for anyone who wants to excel in long and short stitching because often times wrong direction of stitches is decisive in how neat and smooth the surface of long and short stitch will look in the end.

With practice and experience, you will intuitively know where to insert your needle as you work long and short stitching. And while you're still collecting that baggage of practice, keep in mind the tips I shared in the post to make it easier :)

Aaand speaking of experience and the lack of thereof, we also talked about 10 tips for hand embroidery beginners. Most of the advice in the article is more on the attitude and approach to learning this new craft. However, some of the points are quite practical!

April plans

The launch of the new designs is drawing near and near! Hashtag coming soon would fit here very nicely. When they launch you can expect a more detailed description and explanation here :)

Let's also learn a couple of new stitches again, shall we? I was thinking detached buttonhole. Another technique that I'm particularly fond of and would be absolutely happy to explore more here on Stitch Floral.

The rest is a mystery for now. As always, I have enough ideas, but we will see what makes the final cut, haha.

Actually, I might travel a little this month, so if I don't answer your comments or letters quickly, I hope for your understanding! Some posts will probably be prepared in advance to auto-publish, so if you see a new post but don't get a reply, please don't be confused :)

Hope you had a sweet March and will spend April in the most joyful way!