Spring Vegetables

Green Onion

Spring Vegetables

I have been working on designing a pattern for a spring gardening sampler. The sampler will include a collection of tools, seeds and early spring vegetables. I picked out a few vegetables that I am going to use in the sampler to practice on. I tried 3 of the spring vegetables the radish, a green onion and an asparagus stalk. Each of the vegetables is about 3 inches high. On the first row I outlined the vegetables in plain black cotton thread with needle sketching. I mainly used split stitch and used fly stitches for the points on the asparagus. The split stitch is very quick to work and doesn't use much thread. Needle sketching is a good technique for quickly stitching up designs to see how they will look.

Working Radish

On the bottom row I coloured in the vegetables. The radish was outlined in black split stitch the same as on the top row. The root is coloured in using a long and short stitch. I started with the center row as it had full length stitches. I used the central row to line up the rest of the stitches and worked the top in red and the bottom row white. I originally planned to colour the top in green but I liked the way the radish looked with just the bulb coloured and the top left with just the black outline. I thought that would look good for the asparagus too so I only outlined the stalk instead of colouring it in. The tip of the asparagus is padded and then covered with a slanted satin stitch. The tip is covered with darker green fly stitches to mark out the sections on the tips. 

Working Green Onion

I didn't outline the onion in black. I used a solid Cretan stitch which is also called the Persian stitch or the long armed feather stitch for the two large onion leaves. I used a variegated green thread and started with the darkest part at the top and worked down so the tip is very light. I filled in the largest leaf first then the one behind. The leaf in the middle is made a lighter colour to stand out. I thought that it was too narrow and pointy to fill in using the Cretan stitch so I tried a solid fly stitch instead. The roots are done in an off white and are worked in a split stitch.

Crewel Embroidery Flowers

Crewel Embroidery Frittillaria

I have two pieces to show today. At the end is the final piece for lesson 1 in my Crewel Embroidery Course. First are the Frittillia flowers to the left which I am going to explain how I made. The finished flowers here are about 4½ x 5 inches. I used a larger piece of fabric so the piece can be made into a drawstring bag later. I think this would be a good piece to make into a pattern. It is stitched with medici wool on linen fabric. In the first picture below I sketched out the flowers on the fabric. Then outlined the petals with a Double Running Stitch in pink. The flowers are filled in with a Chessboard filling stitch which is made up of evenly spaced satin stitch squares. The Chessboard Filling stitch is a very popular stitch in Crewel embroidery. When stitching the plant I created perspective by stitching the leaves that are in the front first and then the stem. Next I stitched the leaves and the stem behind. At the place where the leaves break I ended the stitches under the edges of the leaves. This raises the edge of the front leaf up and makes it look like it was made on top of the leaf behind. The leaves are worked in a fishbone stitch which takes the curve of the leaf nicely and looks like it has a spine down the center of the leaf. The stem is filled in with a slanted blanket stitch. I kept the line of the blanket stitch to the outside of the curve to fill in the small spaces left between the stitches. I took out one leaf from the sketch because the design was getting too busy. It would have made it harder to see which direction the leaves were going at the base. I finished the ground in a stem stitch I used two strands of the medici wool. The wool is very fine and took about twice as long to make a piece this size than with the Appleton wool.



Rear Flower

Flowers Outlined

Front Flower

The green Crewel embroidery flower is 7 x 9 inches and worked in three shades of grass green Appleton crewel wool. The leaves have blanket stitch along the bottoms. The edges of the leaves are done in an outline stitch. Then each leaf is filled in with running stitches. The dark green center of the flower is a stem stitch circle surrounded by buttonhole scallops. The petals and the stem are filled in with chain stitches. I think that the leaves are the most attractive part of the picture being made with the three different kinds of stitches. I found this piece was surprisingly fast to work



Crewel Embroidery Green Flower