Long and Short Stitch

Today I will show you the second step I took in my floral picture. I wanted to demonstrate the use of long and short stitches. These stitches are a variation of Satin Stitch and are used to good effect in creating shades of colour to give depth and volume to flowers. So I drew a lilly next to my generic apricot coloured flower and began to fill it in with long and short stitches, in several different colours.

Both Satin Stitch and Long and Short Stitches can be wasteful of thread as you pass the needle all the way under the area being filled to come up on the far side. There is another way that does not use as much thread; that is to bring the needle up again as close to where you have taken the needle down without going back through the same hole, take it back over and across the area to be filled and repeat the procedure on the far side.

That is how I filled in the back petal of the lilly. I have shown you the wrong side of the work in the centre picture on the bottom row, so that you can see the difference. On the right side it just looks the same as the other petals, as you can see in the final picture.