Floral Designs: Help with Stitches (Flower Centers)

To recap, I'm discussing two smaller flower canvases and their elements and giving you options for various flower parts you'll see again and again in floral canvases.  Our choices are "Red Floral Heart" from Ann Wheat Pace and "Magnolia" from JudyAnn.   Today I'm talking about the centers of flowers.  JudyAnn's magnolia blossom has a center that's seen from the side.  It is darker at the base.  The little flowers on the red heart are more stylized and all one shade of yellow.

When it comes to flower centers, figure out first if there is shading and just how much room you have to work with.  If the space is small and especially if there is a lot of shading, tent stitches are a great choice.  I'd also consider tent stitches for the magnolia just because the center is less important than the flower petals.  The red heart has a lot of flowers but the centers are tiny, probably only 4-6 stitches each.  Tent stitch is also a good choice here.  

But let's say you want to add a bit of sparkle and drama to your centers, which would be fun on the red heart canvas.  Beads or metallics are the answer.  You can use a metallic thread in a tent stitch no matter how small your flower center is.  Beads are more tricky.  Size eleven beads will cover more ground.  I'm guessing but I think you could only add 3 size eleven beads to the red heart's centers. If you have size fourteen or fifteen beads, you could possibly add 4-5 beads in the very heart of your flower.  Let me be clear--I'm talking about attaching the beads with tent stitches and going through the center of each bead twice to keep them from wiggling.  Beads are very wiggly things!

Not everyone likes beads, either.  Remember, you can always substitute a tiny cross stitch for a bead. That gives texture although it's not as raised a look as a bead gives.  Tiny cross stitches would work nicely for the floral centers in both of our designs and you can do shading with cross stitches, too.  

You also might consider French knots (or Colonial knots, which are made differently but look very similar).  This gives a raised texture to your flower centers.  I think that would look wrong for the magnolia since it is a side view and might fight visually with the flower petals, but would work very nicely for the more stylized little pink flowers on the red heart.  You can shade with French knots, too.  Just have a photo of the unstitched canvas handy so you can see where to change colors as French knots tend to spread out and make it hard to see the subtly of the painted design.

So for flower centers we have tent stitches (again), beads, metallic threads, cross stitches, and either French knots or Colonial knots, depending on which you find easier to create.  

Floral Designs: Help with Stitches (Stems)

JudyAnn's "Magnolia"

I browse the Internet each morning, looking for content about stitch guides or general needlepoint to add to either the Chilly Hollow Needlepoint Adventure or this blog which is about stitch guides.  There are lots of tutorials and tips, but it struck me that there's not much to help you tackle a category of designs and give you tools to stitch that category successfully.  So I thought I'd attempt it using the category of flower designs and two examples. 

The first (above) is JudyAnn's "Magnolia," a printed design that you can pick up on Etsy or on JudyAnn's website.  Links are below.  

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1015718026/magnolia-needlepoint-canvas-flower

https://judyannneedlepoint.com/product/magnolia-needlepoint-canvas-4/

"Magnolia" is available on 18 count canvas as either a 4 inch round or a 6 inch square.  I'll talk about the cheaper and smaller 4 inch round.

Ann Wheat Pace Designs' "Red Floral Heart"

The second design I'll be discussing is "Red Floral Heart" from Ann Wheat Pace Designs.  This is a hand painted canvas on 18 count canvas that is roughly 5 inches wide and 5 inches tall.  Link is below.

https://woolfloss.com/products/red-floral-heart-240b?_pos=226&_sid=6c0bcf89b&_ss=r

Both designs have flowers with petals, leaves and stems.  The flowers have yellow centers in both instances.  What stitches work well on such elements?  Let's start with stems which are fairly stylized in both cases.  They aren't fat or thin stems, just regular stems that aren't that important when it comes to the design.  You could go old school and tent stitch them.  That might be a good choice for Magnolia which has very little stem.  However, the red heart has six stems so it might make sense to use stem stitch (ha, get it?) there.  Stem stitch, especially done in rows packed tightly (it's called Packed Stem Stitch if you do rows) with a brown perle-type thread gives you a slightly knobby texture that mimics woody plant stems.  If I am doing several rows of Packed Stem Stitch, I like to offset the rows so that each row's stitch starts and stops in a slightly different place than the previous row's.  That adds to the texture. 

Does learning stem stitch seem overwhelming?  Then let's couch a thread over those stems!  Couching is easy.  You come up at the top (or bottom) of your stem, hold the thread roughly in the direction the stem goes, and using a thinner thread in a matching color, couch the main thread with little stitches that go over the main thread.  Space the couching stitches fairly evenly.  It's a little fiddly handling two threads at once but you can use magnets to position the main thread while you couch.  When you get to the end, plunge both the main thread and the couching thread to the back side and tie off.  (I don't like to drag threads from one stem to another across all that background personally but you do what makes sense to you.)

The trick with couching is to pick the right main thread.  Good choices are single strand threads like wool, perle cotton, bamboo or even a metallic if you can find the right color and want to add subtle sparkle to your design. I normally use one ply of a matching color of cotton floss to tie down my main thread because cotton floss is a) cheap and b) comes in a ton of colors so matching colors is fairly easy.

If your stem is fat and has a lot of bend, you can try using Diagonal Mosaic stitch.  You may need to do lots of compensation if this is your choice, though.  A simpler but similar look can be achieved with long slanting stitches. These are called satin stitch.  Just adjust the width and slant of your stitch to cover the painted stem, but check after you finish a stem to see if you need to add another stitch or two to get complete coverage over your stem.

So there you have five stitches that will work on any stem in a floral design:  tent stitch, Packed Stem Stitch, couching, Diagonal Mosaic, and Satin Stitch.

Next time we'll talk about the center of the flowers.

Black Tie Affair (Beth Hunt and Amy Bunger)

The adorable "Black Tie Affair" lady has turned up on eBay, complete with Amy Bunger's stitch guide for the canvas.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/237057578016?itmmeta=01M3HBEXBPMFNK4TSA3S60ZP5H&hash=item3731bb9420:g:CaIAAeSwu7NqoCB6&itmprp=enc%3AAQALAAAA4GfYFPkwiKCW4ZNSs2u11xBAs0kfCj9xKmhLjsVpLZzV%2FO7Jbl8KLSgkw1m18Vb0qrdM%2BzC8MIc5YhdQitVoTNlPHkOilwNxrgSvYbr%2BwIpJw85W2mqlc5ObkjfN3QolwuDBwtelOmj1fACtTzjwcMEsrHsmREevkbdieR7g%2BW%2ByrxXIt8B2udiKaxoYRe8Hpdw%2F6b553rAP7rGqaI5NNAgvUilg95sk2dsZcGUSVId1bEMDaUlplocwZhitON5qwIVWKqvoRymLGJIHCS0QJW8Wp9zPy6rY%2FPMYyQ%2F3RBl1%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR4bWu6ucaA

This is one of Beth Hunt's people, many of which have Amy guides.

Candyland Christmas Tree Farm (Eye Candy and Ruth Schmuff)

Ada Hayden's "Candyland Christmas Tree Farm" canvas and stitch guide had turned up on eBay.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/237057568457?itmmeta=01M3HBEXBPV3RMZTRMJ6E76MRT&hash=item3731bb6ec9:g:zPIAAeSwKCpqoB4f&itmprp=enc%3AAQALAAAA4GfYFPkwiKCW4ZNSs2u11xCr0rT8W0ujgkaqI1hCUHICboj51PrbrFjjxbCVip3fpw4Ez75yjs%2BNtyDy%2FKs%2Fa27%2FWdRs9q6LjQ%2BPzO8XwAnb2qdghxx1CszbEnb9i%2BZl2r4q%2BgxKC%2FRQ79HyVSkINZEaPcVS2DoI9g7FFEnk7YMTW9Xzx7uiTn14PjYk9zNrWncneUYPomDpYdZlPLqSHAViRsHQ6myph%2BzylJsMJIKt2QfDKmvJFefWYhLy4BjP4cqAeDqz2WOQaZc%2FGcEjPIXaa2kjl4tc%2BbU%2BWAxY2vGq%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR4bWu6ucaA

Ada's designs are available under the Eye Candy name. I believe the guide is by Ruth Schmuff of Bedecked and Beadazzled.

Cherry Blossom Ginger Jar (Colors of Praise and Pam Miller)

Beth did a lovely job with this Colors of Praise canvas, using the stitch guide from Pam Miller which was published in the January/February 2025 issue of Needlepoint Now magazine.

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=29541225035464209&set=gm.28395106160139839&idorvanity=108537025890131

Rainbow Toucan (Needlepoint by Arlene)

Needlepoint by Arlene has a wonderful toucan available (with Arelene's stitch guide) at Bedecked and Beadazzled which distributes Arlene's designs.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DdHtUX_mTfc/

https://bedeckedandbeadazzled.com/product/toucan/

Oysters on the Half Shell (Morgan Julia)

Morgan Julia now has a digital stitch guide available for their oyster platter.  Currently a kit including the beads is also available.

https://morganjuliadesigns.com/products/stitch-guide-for-oysters-on-the-half-shell-1?_kx=_J_rdnNvxpl-p5ox0M-sxKe_dW8vBdau0gAV5QbqAX3Q5z_adzzshb4gk-wH2HbP.RWeQns