Flowers for Elizabeth embroidered sweet bag: 5 – stitching the strawberries

I am up to the part on this sweet bag from Issue 51 of Inspirations magazine that I am embroidering, where I am stitching the strawberries. I love embroidering strawberries!

I stitched the strawberry stems in chain stitch, in two strands of Au Ver a Soie silk thread, first.

The actual strawberries are embroidered by first stitching two layers of Satin Stitch padding, in opposite directions, across the shape. Both layers are stitched INSIDE the split stitch outline.

Then I stitched the final layer of Satin Stitch just  outside the Split Stitch outline shape, to make sure I got a nice neat outline, and a gently rounded contour to each berry.

Then, using one strand of Rainbow Gallery Petite Treasure Braid, I made the cross-hatching across each berry, starting with one large cross to define the angles correctly. Then I worked out in parallel lines, about one eighth of an inch apart, in both directions.

Finally, I stitched a tiny Straight Stitch across each intersection in green, using one strand.

I have yet to stitch the sepals, but they are done later, after some of the surrounding stitches are worked, so that I don’t catch my needle in the looser threads of these stitches.

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