Persian Flower Challenge

My Nan had a birthday book, much like a diary but not specific to any year. For each day there was personality description. I always thought the description on the day I was born fitted me perfectly. Among other things, it said that I would make elaborate plans that I would not carry through. So true! It is not that I am unreliable, if I make a commitment to someone else, I will honour it. It is more because I make far too many plans, and too elaborate plans to fit them all in. Something’s gotta give.

I keep old clothes and fabric remnants that I am going to do something with. I collect patterns and instructions for projects I am going to make and I see challenge after challenge that I want to join in with. There simply is not time for all of it.

Some time ago I kept an old denim skirt that cried out to be made into something else. Many months ago I saw a pattern for a handbag that I simply had to make and several weeks ago the Hand Embroidery Group began a new design challenge that featured a Persian Flower design that I really wanted to join in with. Suddenly I had an aha moment. I could embroidery the Persian Flower onto the flap of the handbag that I could make from the denim skirt.

The design is traced onto tissue paper and transferred to the denim by back stitching along the key lines with fine pale thread. As the first layer of stitching will cover each petal there is no point transferring the details at this stage.

I wanted the centre of the flower to look raised so have padded it with three layers of padding cotton and one layer of white silk. As the silk will be covered with the final stitching, this may seem extravagant, but the silk will smooth out the cotton padding and will look better than the cotton if there is any show through (which there will be).


This is not a raised as I would have liked but I’m not going to redo it. I thought that it needed jazzing up a bit and also thought that the long stitches would benefit from some couching so that they would not get caught so easily.


Again, this is not as regular as I would have liked but it was not easy stitching through I layer of calico, 1 layer of denim, 3 layers of cotton padding, 1 layer of silk and a layer of imitation silver metallic thread.

Happy Stitching