embroider with me now...

Let's do a nice, slow 4 day tutorial for that

sweet little poppy embroidery.

Because embroidery is so incredibly

impressive and I said I would.

Get crafty.

For the first step, you need three colors of floss...

A monochromatic group with one light,

on medium and one dark.

I chose pink for my first group.

But, the first step is tracing the above

image onto some tissue weight woven

fabric. I, personally, am making a little sachet,

hence the tissue weight fabric. But, you can make

whatever you want. Just use a woven and make sure

it is light enough to see the design through.

If you want to use a thick fabric, I recommend

using a Heat Transfer Pencil instead.

Here's me.. pretending to be left handed.

Start with your darkest color.. split your yarn skein into

3 and 3 threads and put one aside. Thread your needle

and knot the bottom.

First, we are going to practice the first step on

our embroidery scrap.

The first stitch is super easy.. it is the 'long and short' stitch.

Start with one row of stitches.. making one 'short stitch'

followed by one 'long' and another 'short'.

Make your stitches directly on top of each other.

Then, start a new row directly next to it, left or right, and

do the opposite.. start with a 'long', then a 'short' and

another 'long'. The key here is that the ends will

be staggered and when you add in new color, the colors

will move nicely into one another.

Make a few rows for practice of this first color... do 4.

Then introduce your second color and your third.

Continue on the same long and short lines you already

created and simply sew the new color stitch

in the length that is up next. If you ended with a 'short',

for example, do a 'long' with you new color.

Excuse the wide variety of stitches on my embroidery

scrap... it is full of practices.

Ok, now let's apply what we've practiced to the real deal.

We are starting with the flower petals.

Yes, this picture is fuzzy. Clearly, my hand was shaking

with excitement.

In the first little block area, 'long and short' stitch

your first color.

When you are done with the first color, layer in the next color

with long and short stitches into the next little box.

For the last and lightest color at the top of the petals,

I tend to cut off the long and short all together

and just do single stitches right next to each other all the way

around. This is technically a 'satin' stitch and I think

looks nice and shiny for the end of the petals.

Step one is complete! Small victories!

More to follow later.

In case you truly are a craft novice and this is

boggling your mind, let me remind you to tie off each color

with a knot when you are done and clip it short.

You can do it!