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.