Long and short flower

In one of my posts last year, I’d written about long and short stitch direction rules. Please click here for the post. Those of you following my blogs must have read my experiments using these rules to improve my long and short stitch. I’d tried 2 different types of leaves and I’m satisfied with both results. I would love to embroider more complicated leaves using this method but today, I would like to share with you a simple long and short flower which I’d embroidered. This flower doesn’t have overlapping petals,( a continuous petal)  so it’s quite easy to embroider.

For this flower, the point of attachment between the petal and the stem is the small dot in the center. Split stitch or outline stitch the flower before starting the long and short embroidery.

As in my long and short leaf 2, I didn’t draw the directional lines on the flower pattern. Rather, I just held the thread toward the dot and stitch into that direction. Starting from the middle, stitch all the way to the left, alternating long and short stitches. Then, embroider from the middle to the right. Here, I’d finished the first row.

Finished the second row. As you can see here, I’d started embroidering on the second part of the petal, from the middle to the left.

Continue in this manner for the whole petal.

The next row is white. I just started from one point, worked long and short stitches in clockwise position till I came back to the starting point. All the while, I pointed the stitches toward the small dot.

Fill the center with French knots.