Today is the final installment on my series about stitches that work well on floral designs. I've been using Judyann's "Magnolia" and Ann Wheat Pace's "Red Floral Heart" as examples of the typical flower designs you'll find. One is more realistic, the other is more stylized. Both (and almost any other design you'll see) have backgrounds, so let's cover easy backgrounds for florals next.
Of course you can go with an all tent stitched background. This might be a good choice for the Red Floral Heart because there are so many flowers, stems and leaves breaking up the background. It can be hard to stitch a background across all that distraction. A lot of folks pick skip tent for this reason--it gives you the smooth tent stitch look, there is no counting of the rows and it is faster than tent stitches.
People also love Nobuko Stitch for backgrounds. It is full coverage which many folks prefer. It would look very nice on the Magnolia's background as it gives texture but not too much. On the other hand, it would be hard to count around all the bits and pieces of flower on the background of the Red Floral Heart.
I like trellis stitches for floral designs because they are easy to do and I associate the latticework look of trellis stitches with gardens. Trellis stitches need some space to show off, though. Neither of these small designs have much background area, which means a trellis stitch really won't work well here.
An easier alternative is stripes. You can create stripes from similar or contrasting colors, vary the width so you have all your stripes 3 stitches wide or go for 3-5-3-5 widths, or any other count you like. The variations are endless but since the stripes are usually worked either in all tent stitches or in combinations of tent stitches for one stripe and something like corduroy stitch for the next, you can do all sorts of fun things with it. I think stripes would work very well on the Red Floral Heart since there are stripes in the bottom of the design. Just make your striped background even with those stripes and you have a great look. The Magnolia doesn't seem to have enough space for stripes to work, though. I'd go with either all tent or Nobuko there.
And there you have it--five ideas for stems, leaves, petals and backgrounds that will work on most any flower canvas. Good luck and have fun!
