May Round-Up

Time for the monthly round-up! Let's see what happened on Stitch Floral blog during May :)

Happy Eid to all fellow muslims celebrating it today! May Allah accept our fasting this Ramadan!

How are your first days of summer this year? We have a sizzling heat so I've barely been outside these last few days. Thinking of taking an umbrella next time I leave my home, haha.

Anyway!

Let's rewind the time a little and go through the May posts once again so that you can check out what you might have missed.

May Round-up

Last month's hero was undoubtedly detached buttonhole.

Ever since February we've been learning some techniques for open filling in hand embroidery: the kind of filling a shape when you can still see the fabric or the background stitching. We have learned seed stitching, arrowhead stitch, chevron stitch, lattice work and then came turn of detached buttonhole.

We have already explored the two basic ways of working detached buttonhole in April. But there is so much more to this technique!

So in May, we spoke about using detached buttonhole with irregular shapes. Because let's be honest, how often do we work perfect squares as in examples that are usually given with embroidery tutorials? Quite rarely, if I may say.

In the post, I'm sharing the way of working detached buttonhole with irregular shapes, like a leaf or a petal – the two most common shapes I could think of. I developed this method myself as a consequence of a lack of any other teaching resources on this matter. There might be different approaches to this situation, so you can take my method as a suggestion rather than a rule.

Then we talked about detached buttonhole variations. Something that I am genuinely enchanted with, but still struggling to get it right, haha. However, I shared with you the two variations that I like the most (hoping you would excuse my poor execution of them) and also dropped there a link to a book where you can see more of variations to practice :)

And we closed the topic of detached buttonhole with the Real Detached Buttonhole lesson. Yes, once again, there is a little disarray in the naming of stitches. The reason I refer to the last one as the Real Detached Buttonhole is because it is literally detached from the fabric. It is one of the common elements of stumpwork, allowing you to create 3D shapes and figures that rise above the ground fabric.

After completing the detached buttonhole topic, we turned back to needlepainting. And to be more specific, we spoke about filling shapes with long and short stitch. My example is worked in the same color, however, the same method can be used while working several shades of color.

I wanted to speak about this matter for a while now (I actually have a list of topics for the needlepainting tips series). But the reason I raised this topic exactly now is because I'm using a lot of long and short stitching in my new design the glimpse of which you could see in the post (I used it as an example) and you can also see in the title picture of this Round-up. So I hope that those of you who purchase the new design can turn to that post in case you need extra help when working that element.

Lastly, we spoke about embroidery needles again. I am the type of stitcher who doesn't really have all the needles organized by types and sizes. So when choosing a needle for the project I adhere to certain steps. These steps have been explained in the post on how to choose embroidery needle: 4 conditions to consider. 

This topic is also important because when you get a recommendation on a needle in embroidery projects and tutorials that you purchase or see in needlework magazines, you have to understand that these recommendations stand for the exact fabric and thread the author of the project is using. If you take a step to the left or to the right from the list of materials and choose something of your own, you will need to adjust your embroidery needle choice accordingly. 

Hope the post helps some of you to not get lost in this matter :) 

And that's all!

June plans

My main goal is to complete and launch the new design. It is the most colorful work I have ever done up to now, and it is also quite different from what I usually create style-wise. It is also literally overflowing with long and short stitching, so anyone who wants to have a good practice on this technique – you're up to a real feast!

I'm really excited and intrigued about how it is turning out and can't wait to show you the finished result :)

As for the rest of the month... Unlike usually, I still don't have a set plan for June, oops! I'm going to work on it right now, though. Tell me in the comments if there is anything you would like to see or learn on this blog and let's make it happen :)