Bloomin' Marvellous : 7

It's a great feeling when things just go your way. That's how it happened with this one. The colours chose themselves and the stitches offset each other with no unpicking on my part.


I cheat a little to get sharp points in stem stitch. When you get to the point, end off as you would a normal row of stem and take your thread to the back at the point. Anchor it by threading your needle under the last stitch in the row, and then come back up through the same hole you ended your "row" on and carry on stem stitching down the other side of the petal. This way, you don't get that stray strand running across the inside of the point, or a rounded point.

To form the "overblown" centre, stitch a row of beads along the outline of the circle first and then fill in the middle, clustering the beads.

Go to the useful links page on my website for stitching books and online stitch libraries.

Download the pattern for Bloomin' Marvellous 7 here.