Queen of Flowers - Pollen

With the bud and last remaining leaves stitched, I had just a few finishing details to stitch.

© JEC/Carol-Anne Conway

The anther or pollen on the open flowers are worked in Japanese knots, I like to leave these to last so that my working thread does not catch on them as I stitch. First, I stitched a yellow weft foundation in the centre of the flower. Randomly spaced knots where worked on top.

© JEC/Carol-Anne Conway

On the smaller bloom on the right, I had originally worked the shadow area in pink and the centre of the flower in white. I decided to rework these areas based on what I had done on the full bloom and bud. The pink area was removed and redone in a thinner white thread. The white centre was removed and redone in yellow with a few yellow knots on top.

© JEC/Carol-Anne Conway

Happy Stitching

Queen of Flowers - bud

Where colour had played a large part in the other elements of this design, I wanted to form the bud solely using different thickness of thread and couching methods. The bud on the original background fabric is a deep pink but, having already moved away from the pinks, I chose to do a pure white bud. I put in the foundation threads for the entire bud leaving one point open space between the petals.

© JEC/Carol-Anne Conway

My intention was to make the bud appear round by using thicker threads and diagonal couching on the fullest parts.

© JEC/Carol-Anne Conway

Again, I used colour and various thicknesses of thread on the surrounding leaves to give an increased depth of field to the bud.

© JEC/Carol-Anne Conway

Happy stitching