Sitting outside amongst beautiful wildflowers, birds enjoying the day above you and a lovely picnic to enjoy – what could be more summery than that! If this is far from your reality at the moment then immerse yourself in stitching these 2 blocks and you can almost (!) imagine yourself there!
Let’s start with the…
Wildflowers and Summer Bird
You will need the following colours…
For the bird… #3765, #738, #223, #310
For the Wildflowers… #906, #472, #471, #742, #3609, #160
Use 2 strands throughout unless otherwise stated.
Stitching the Bird…
#3765: Chain stitch the wings. This is just a normal chain stitch – coming out on line 1 and then anchoring the chain stitch on line 2. It creates an elongated chain stitch that fills the shape really nicely as you go along. Place each chain stitch close to one another to fill the space of each wing.
Once the wing areas are completed in the chain stitch – Brick Stitch the Body area as marked in the diagram below.
- #738: Satin Stitch the wings & the small area under the body.
- #223: Satin stitch under the head.
- #738: straight stitch the eye half circle.
- #310: straight stitch the beak and do a vertical stitch in the centre of the half circle for the eye.
Stitching the Wildflowers…
These are really simple to do and use a mixture of the following colours to create the effect…
906, #472, #471, #742, #3609, #160
You can see from this photo which greens I used for which areas and you really can’t go wrong with this so I will leave it up to you to copy or to use your own colour combinations.
For all Flowers: Stems & Leaves: Split Stitch
- Flower 1: #906 stems, leaves and flower bases. For the petal sprays use 1 strand of either #3609 or #160 to straight stitch.
- Flower 2: #471 stems, leaves and some of the straight stitched flowers. The other flower heads are straight stitched in #472.
- Flower 3: #472 stem and some leaves, #471 some of the other leaves, #742 chain stitch the elongated petals.
- Flower 4: #906 stems, leaves and flower bases. #3609 (1 strand) straight stitch petals.
- Flower 5: #906 stems, leaves and flower bases. #160 (1 strand) straight stitch petals.
To finish this block: #223 Back Stitch.
The Picnic Basket
Let’s start by stitching the basket, for this you will need the following colours…
#839, #3772, #738, #223
I decided to fill the Basket with a lattice stitch and chose Battlement filling, this is quite simple once you get going but if this is a little bit confusing for you then I would suggest sticking to trellis stitch which is a bit more simple. There is a tutorial for both of these lattice filling stitches on the blog here… Trellis stitch and Battlement Filling.
My basket was filled with a total of 4 grids in the following colours…
- #3772
- #738
- #839
- #223
I then used #738 as the colour to anchor the final top grid down on the cross sections.
To finish the Basket…
- #3772: Brick Stitch horizontally to fill the top area and then in the same colour, Back stitch down each side of the basket and take one long stitch across the base.
- #839: Long stitch around the edge of the brick stitch top section.
- #839: Use 3 strands to create the loop of the handle and couch this down with 1 strand.
Stitching the Picnic Goodies…
Use the colours as shown in the photo…
Bee: Straight stitch the stripes in the yellow and black and then the black antennae. Chain stitch the 2 wings.
Watermelon Lolly:
- #3712 Brick Stitch
- #742 & #906 Split stitch
- #3772: Satin Stitch
- #310 (1 strand): straight stitch the pips.
Jam Pot: #3804: Satin Stitch. #712: Straight stitch across the top and chain stitch the frills. #839: Straight stitch around the top to outline.
Apple: #906: Satin Stitch. #839 Satin Stitch, pistol stitch the stork.
Cheese: Split Stitch.
French Stick: Brick stitch
Your Picnic Basket is complete. To Finish the block Back Stitch the outer edge in #3804.
Make sure you show off your lovely stitching on the Happy Stitching FB Group or send me some pics and I’ll post them here.
Don’t forget you can also share your stitching on Instagram with #stitchdoodlesembroidery.
Happy Stitching!
