Pretty Flowers to Stitch for Spring

It feels like there are no end of cross stitch flower patterns, and they’re a great thing to knit in the spring if you’re waiting for real flowers to bloom, or as a Mother’s Day gift for a special mom in your life. Let’s look at some colorful and fun to stitch flower cross stitch patterns.

I love this collection of colorful bouquets from Catstitch21. There are eight patterns included and they all vary in size and number of colors, so if you like them check out the listing on Etsy for all the details.

Wizardi has this pretty pink dahlia cross stitch pattern kit with a bit of a watercolor look. The kit includes 14 count fabric, the pattern, cross stitch instructions in four languages and the 17 colors of floss you’ll need. The design comes out to 4.33 inches or 11 cm square.

Amanda Gregory Designs has a cute free cross stitch pattern for a basket full of daffodils. The design is 56 by 56 stitches, which comes out to 4 inches or 10 cm square. It uses 13 colors for the cross stitching and four different colors for back stitching.

If you want some flowers that don’t look super realistic, try the geometric spring flowers design from Tango Stitch. This one is 139 by 139 stitches, which comes out to about 9.8 inches or 25 cm square. It uses eight colors and you could easily change it up to suit your decor.

Nothing says spring like delicate white blossoms on trees, whether that’s dogwood or cherry blossoms or anything else that’s blooming. These spring flowers from Design for Cross Stitch are so pretty and delicate with lots of details. The pattern uses 18 colors and is 108 by 162 stitches. That comes out to 8.07 by 10.5 inches or 20.5 by 26.67 cm on 14 count fabric.

Looking ahead to summer flowers, there’s also this cute black eyed susan cross stitch pattern from AOK Corral. This free pattern is 45 by 59 stitches, or 3 by 4 inches (7.5 by 10 cm) on 14 count fabric and uses eight colors

Easter Flowers to Stitch

Celebrate Spring with Sweet Stitched Flowers

Birdhouse and Blue Flowers

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Cross Stitch Hearts for Mother's Day

I love the look of variegated cross stitch floss and how it makes it possible to stitch with a variety of colors without changing thread, giving your project more depth and a more complex look without you having to do anything different.

Or at least not much different. I recently came across this blog post from The Copper Fox all about how to use variegated floss and it noted that many people would say it’s a good idea to complete a whole stitch (when you’re stitching whole cross stitches) with the floss before going on to the next stitch. Most of us stitch row by row, but of course if you do that with variegated yarn, it could change color along the way and you’ll end up with stitches that are half one color and half another color or a different shade.

Of course that makes total sense but I’d never thought about it.

The post includes swatches with different kinds of variegated threads to show the different between working stitch by stitch or row by row, and it doesn’t make a huge different over the small area shown but I can see how it might make a difference if you had really long rows or if you just want to make sure your stitches are a single color whenever possible.

In addition to this experiment, the post talks about other ways to work with multicolored floss, including deliberately mixing the colors among the strands of floss you are stitching with and stitching in a different order instead of right to left and top to bottom (or whatever direction you typically work) to get different effects from the thread.

It’s fun to geek out on this stuff because it can make a difference if you want to play with it, or you can just stitch on without giving it much thought, and both will give you good results.

Check out all the experiments at The Copper Fox.

Do you do anything different when you stitch with variegated floss? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo: The Copper Fox]

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