Embellishing Hexagon Flowers with Floral Motifs

This month during our Sip Tea and EPP party we are talking about adding embellishments to your English Paper Piecing projects. There are many ways you can beautify your hexagons or any other shapes of your EPP projects by adding small embroidery motifs, foundation paper piecing designs or some hand quilting. These small additions will give your work a unique and charming touch.

In the previous post I talked about choosing the same colour prints for the hexagons for my "Grandma's Love" quilt and sewing them into flowers. I often get asked when and how I add the embroidery to my blocks. The answer is that I always add the embroidery after I sew together all the hexagons into flowers. Because there is no pattern for this quilt and for the small embroidery motifs, I feel that I need to see the completed flower first to be able to come up with the right pattern. In the previous post I also mentioned that before I make the central solid hexagon for the flower, I to apply a cotton iron-on interfacing onto the back side of the fabric to stabilise it for the embroidery.

Once the hexagon flower is ready (like the one above), I start thinking about the embroidery design. I look at the patterns in each hexagon and see if any of the elements inspire me. The bottom hexagon with daisies inspired me this time, and I thought that white daises would look lovely on the pink background. I roughly sketch the idea on paper first, and select the required embroidery floss. I picked white for the petals, yellow for the centres and green for the stems. Once I am happy with the idea, I sketch the design onto the central hexagon. It does not have to be precise, just a rough idea. I like to use a heat removable pen for this step.

Then, using a cuticle stick, I remove the paper from the central hexagon only. Keep all other papers in until you are ready to applique the flower onto a background.

The next step is the fun part - the embroidery. Using two strands of white embroidery floss, I stitch the petals of the daisies using a lazy daisy stitch of various length. You can see how this stitch is done here. 

The next step is to fill the centres of the daisies. Using two strands of yellow embroidery floss, I fill the spaces with colonial knots. Here is the video of this stitch.

The last step is to add a couple of buds and the stems. For the top part of the buds I use two strands of white embroidery floss and short straight stitches. For the bottom part of the buds I use two strands of dark green embroidery floss and short straight stitches.

Then, I add the stems using the same floss and a backstitch. A few leaves stitched using a lazy daisy stitch and our floral motif is complete.

I apply the same principle for all the blocks. It really is easy and a lot of fun. Just let your imagination take over and keep stitching away. Hope this helps. Happy tiny stitches! Larisa xox