Here we are at Week 2 of our Hopeful Flowers Stitch Along! It has been great to see the blocks that everyone has been posting over in the Facebook group. We love seeing how you take our pattern and make it your own.
Today's block is the periwinkle flower, and we have used a couple of unique stitches for this one—the Pekinese stitch and the cable chain stitch, along with our good friends the blanket stitch and the French knot. Again, we will be doing something a bit different with the blanket stitch, but it is a fun and easy way to add dimension to leaves.
Block 2 Periwinkle Flower
Start with your 9" square of fabric and mark your stems using a light box or a window. We hooped our block for the stitching of the stems to eliminate puckering.
Stitches Used:Pekinese, angled blanket stitch, cable chain, French knots, stem stitch
The cable chain stitch is a fun way to vary the chain stitch. It gives a linked look without being too complicated.
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| Bring needle up at top of line. |
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| Wrap thread around needle once. |
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| Take a small bite of fabric. |
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| Wrap thread under needle. |
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| Pull through. |
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| Wrap thread around needle. |
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| Take a bite of fabric and keep thread under the needle. |
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| Pull through and continue on down the rest of your stem |
The Pekinese stitch is one of our favorites—so much that we did an entire blog post about it that you can read HERE. It is a 2-step stitch that starts with a back stitch and then lace another thread through the back stitch to create a series of loops on the top and bottom of the back stitch. There are many ways that you can change the look of this stitch to suit your needs just by the amount of tension you put on the loops as you are creating them. For this block we chose to pull them snugly on the bottom of the back stitch and then left a larger loop on the top of the back stitch. We have step by step pictures here, a blog post about the stitch, and then there will be a link to Mary Corbet's video on this stitch at the bottom of this post.
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| Line the inside of the cutout with back stitches. |
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| Complete the circle of back stitches, while trying to keep them an even size. |
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| Come up just below and between two back stitches. |
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| Pull your thread flush against the two back stitches. |
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| Bring the back of your needle down through the back stitch you skipped and over the thread below it. |
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| Leave a loop. |
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| Skip a back stitch and bring the back of your needle up through the next back stitch. |
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| Continue in the same way around the circle leaving loops that are roughly the same size. Use your finger to hold the loops in place as you go around. |
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| Bring the back of your needle down through the back stitch you skipped and over the thread below it. |
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| Bring your needle to the back and tie off. |
Now we will stitch the leaves with our beloved blanket stitch. This method is an easy way to make veins on our leaves. Using a variegated thread adds even more dimension. In the pictures, I have used a white gel pen to mark a series of tiny dots down the center of the leaf to give me a guide. If you don't want to mark, just eyeball it—which is what we do most of the time.
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| Come up at the top of the leaf, down at the first dot, and then back up at an angle with your thread underneath the needle. |
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| The first blanket stitch. |
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| Continue making your blanket stitches down one side of the leaf. |
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| Continue making blanket stitches up the other side of the leaf. |
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| Use your previous stitches as a guide for the other side. |
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| A finished leaf. |
To get your free download, follow these instructions:
1. Click on the link below that says Hopeful Flowers Block 2
2. You will be directed to our What's Happening Page. It may ask you if you would like to go to that page, and if so click the link provided.
3. Scroll down until you see the Hopeful Flowers wallhanging.
4. Follow the directions there for downloading your free pattern.
And just like that, we are finished with Block 2! We will be taking two weeks away from our Hopeful Flowers project as we have two different stitch along reveals coming up. Next week will be our block reveal for the Potted Petals Stitch Along, and the week after that will be the Winter Wonderland Stitch Along reveal—definitely a busy time at Through the Needle's Eye! Hopefully everyone can use that time to catch up on these blocks or maybe join the fun of either or both of the stitch alongs just mentioned.
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