DMC Thread Colors Used:
Greens - 934, 520, 522, 3013
Coral - 3705
Light Pink - 819
Maroon - 814
Stitches Used:
Materials:
Details:
* I used all 6 six strands of the embroidery thread throughout the project
This bouquet was based on a picture of a friend's wedding bouquet. It was kind of intimidating to start and I didn't know how to draw a template of an entire bouquet so I just went for it!
The first thing I did was lightly draw some leafy guidelines with my Fine Point Sharpie. These helped me visualize where my embroidery would be on the hoop and gave me my general shape of the bouquet. You can see in the picture below that it is more triangle shaped than round and that I wanted it to be nice and wide with foliage hanging down the center!
I started with the greenery at the back of the bouquet first and work my way towards what shows the most in a bouquet (roses and such). The layering effect worked really well for me and I think made the final product look much more realistic.
I used a dark green (934) in a chain stitch (since they look like little leaves) over my first marker guidelines. I chose a dark green as my base because the leaves in the back of the bouquet would be shaded and therefore appear darker than the ones that end up at the front of the bouquet.
You can see in the below picture my chain stitches with 934 when I was finished. Then I added in some eucalyptus leaf circles with my marker since they are another bouquet base that usually end up underneath all the flowers.
I used another dark green (520) to fill in some of the leaves that are nearest to the base since those all tend to be in the shade. I only did about five of these leaves and I used the satin stitch for all of them. You really don't notice these guys in the final product but without them I think the bouquet would have looked a bit flat.
Next I finished up my eucalyptus leaves with a lighter green (522) and the satin stitch, of course. I ended up doing more than i planned because I liked the color so much!
The next layer of the bouquet were the Seeded Eucalyptus Berries. I drew some little dots on the project of where in general I wanted them to be then used french knots (wrapped once) and a yellower green (3013).
Next was time to start adding in some flowers using the Rose/Woven Spider Wheel Stitch. I decided to start with my Maroon Roses (814). First I drew circles on my project of where I wanted them to be and then went for it! I felt like they looked more natural in clusters instead of dispersing them evenly throughout the project.
Next I added Coral roses (3705) and I made them really big because that is what the original bouquet looked liked, then I added very light pink roses (819).
At this point I had already used all the colors that I had intended to use and clearly had some big gaps so it was time to fill those in! I added more roses in various colors, then add some french knots in dark green (520) in very tiny areas, then added more eucalyptus leave in bigger areas (522). That filled in my bouquet nicely but the edge of the bouquet didn't look full enough so I added more eucalyptus leaves there as well.
Basically, I just kept adding until the end result ended up looking exactly how I wanted it to, lots of layered greenery with roses poking out and really capturing the essence of the original bouquet!
Next I flipped the project over and made large stitches all the way around the circumference and trimmed the excess fabric.
Then I pulled my stitches tight to finish of the back and put a knot in the underside to hold everything together.
You can kind of see the knot in the picture below.
Lastly, I added some thread to the gold tightener so it can be easily hung. All done!
