Today I have two small Lazy Daisy stitch projects for you. These are suitable for a small frame. Or they would look wonderful decorating one end of two scarves, at the top or pocket of an apron, or even embellishing the back of a jacket. Do you need a small decorated pillow? They would rock that as well. If you need a stitch review, you can find it in Part 1 and Part 2.

Flowers in flowerpot

You can see the first project above. This design measures about 5.5 inches square. You can print out the image above at about 90% of its full size. Or simply sketch it from the picture inside a 5.5 inch box. This design is 100 years old and somebody drew it freehand to begin with. Who’s going to know if your dimensions are a tiny bit off?

Once you get the design transferred to your fabric, you will need to grab your colors. The original was embroidered in fine embroidery yarns like 1 or two strands of tapestry yarn. (It comes with four strands together.) You could use one strand of pearl cotton or four strands of embroidery floss instead.

Colors you will need

You will need:

• pale jade green for leaves
• orchid
• old rose
• heliotrope
• yellow
• delft blue

How to embroider the flowers and flowerpot

• Begin with the leaves in tree stitch. Start at the tip. Use the green.
• Use chain stitch for the stems. Also in green.
• The tendrils use the green in back stitch. (This is the curly line coming off the stem.)

The large flower is worked in chain stitch from the outside in. Starting with the outer row:

• The outer row is lazy daisy stitch in orchid.
• Work the row inside that with lazy daisy stitches in old rose.
• Complete a row of chain stitch in the rose.
• Inside the chain stitch, a row of lazy daisy stitches in heliotrope. The tips of the daisies will go into the chain of the previous row.
• Make the center in a yellow tree stitch. Start at one end and work to the other.

The circular flowers

Complete the two circular flowers by making eight long lazy daisy stitches. For the lower flower, make the daisy stitches in orchid. Then with rose, weave over and under the stitch arms like you see in the illustration above. Complete the flower with a yellow center of tiny lazy daisy stitches or French knots.

For the upper flower, make the spokes in heliotrope and complete the flower in the same color. Instead of weaving over and under, this time you will loop around and around the two threads that make each lazy daisy stitch as you see above.

After the first row or two you will loop around each individual thread of the daisy stitch, as above. This makes a nice, tightly woven flower. Make the weaving as large or as small as you like. Again, make a yellow center.

The bowl

The upper edge of the bowl is in separated lazy daisy stitches. They march in a line across the rim. Keep the loops a bit loose so that the line of stitches and their spaces appear even. This row is in delft blue. Then:

• Hanging from the top border of the bowl, seven woven drops dangle.
• Work a row of back stitch in rose just above the blue chain stitch.
• Also use back stitch for the two lines coming down from the sides of the bowl, but work these in blue.
• Use jade in regular chain stitch for the sides of the bowl.
• Also use jade for the bottom of bowl, but work closely-spaced separated chain stitches.
• Above this line, work four points in tree stitch, as you see in the illustration below.

Use four different shades of thread or yarn for these stitches. The first, or inner, stitch is yellow. Follow that with heliotrope, then orchid, and finally rose for the largest outside stitch.

Circular Medallion

I liked this design a lot. For some reason this one really appealed to me, and I’ll try to find something to embroider it onto.

This would be a great decoration for a vintage style handbag or small pillow. It measures six inches in diameter.

The colors

To work the second of the lazy daisy stitch projects you will need one or two strands of tapestry yarn, pearl cotton, or four strands of embroidery floss. The original instructions even suggested four-fold Germantown, which was worsted knitting wool. The worker would then separate the four strands and use one at a time. The color list:

• medium dull blue, like DMC 793
• dark dull blue, like DMC 792524
• light/medium blue green, like DMC 518
• dark blue green, like DMC 3760
• gray-green, like DMC 524
• heliotrope, like DMC 33
• flame, like DMC 347 or any red/red-orange that you like

Usually I don’t match DMC colors to vintage patterns, but the suggestions for this particular design were very vague. It suggested two shades of dull blue. What in the world is that? I had to consult a DMC color chart so I could figure it out for myself. While I was there, I decided to jot down the numbers that I found. If you have a selection of threads in this color range that you think works better, by all means use them.

The flower

This illustration shows how the flower center is worked.

• The very center horizontal satin stitches are in flame/red/red-orange.
• To the right and left of the flame stitch, work tree stitch. Begin at the center and work out to the edges. Use the lighter blue-green thread.
• Surround the oval with back stitch in heliotrope.
• The first lazy daisy row, closest to the flower center, is in dark blue.
• Use gray to complete a second row of daisy stitches, about half the size, at the ends of the first daisy row.
• Extending from the flower center, work the large petals in light blue tree stitch.
• Connect the petals close to their tips with buttonhole stitch done in heliotrope.

The rest of the embroidery

Here’s how to complete the embroidery.

• Work the central flower stem in dark blue-green tree stitch.
• The two leaves closest to the flower are the lighter blue-green. Use tree stitch for this as well.
• Work the small tendrils (curly lines) coming from the top two leaves in lighter blue-green, using back stitch.
• The large dark tendrils coming from the base of the flower stem are back stitched in dark blue-green.
• All other leaves and tendrils are in gray-green.

Next Lesson

And this concludes Lazy Daisy Stitch Projects. The next embroidery lesson series focuses on appliqué. If you enjoy the look of Twenties and Thirties appliqué quilts and needlework, you won’t want to miss it.

In this second installment of Lazy Daisy Stitches, I give you several more variations of the stitch. If you missed the first part, you can find it here. It includes the original stitch, and the introduction to Lessons in Embroidery for Beginners: Lesson Five. You’ll also find several variations that you will need for the upcoming projects.

The original article discussing lazy daisy stitches covered a page and a half of very small type on a large-format magazine page. With eleven examples and much discussion to go with them, it posed much too long for any modern web page. However, taken at one time, it did provide a nice month’s amusement for the needleworker who wanted to master and expand the lazy daisy stitches and variations.

The first time we discussed the actual lazy daisy stitch, leaf sprays, a dedicated leaf stitch, and single spaced daisy stitches. This time you will learn four more variations. However, I don’t know that one of them really counts as a lazy daisy stitch. The original author Ethelyn Guppy thought so, though. We rely on her expertise in 1928.

Covered Open Daisy Stitch

I’m not sure what else you would call this. No description appears in the text.

To make this stitch you first complete a row of open lazy-daisy stitches, often called the fly stitch. They are made like the second and successive rows of the leaf stitch. You come out at the left top edge of the stitch and take the needle back into the fabric at the right top edge. The needle goes underneath and catches the loop at the bottom of the stitch, in the middle.

Once your first row is complete, go back over the arms of the stitch with a buttonhole stitch. This can be the same color as the foundation, or a different color. Your call.

Hebedo Stitch

This is actually a form of a buttonhole stitch. It is not in any way a lazy daisy stitch. However, one of the projects originally featured in this lesson was a hand towel. The article suggested this stitch as a decorative hem. So how do you make it?

If you know how to make a buttonhole stitch from Lesson Four, you can make this easily. Normally you would come up from the bottom of the fabric and lift the top thread as you go back down. The needle passes under the thread top to bottom. Right?

This time, you come out of the fabric from the bottom. You reach behind the top thread and send the needle underneath, back to front. This creates a little twist or loop at the top of the fold. Then you bring the needle from the front and take it back down behind.

In the example above, the stitches are completed in groups of two. This adds strength the the edge as well as a decorative element. Two threads, in this case, are better than one.

Points in Tree Stitch

This is made just like the leaf or tree stitch described in Part 1 of the Lazy Daisy series. Instead of beginning with closed lazy daisy stitches, however, you start with open ones.

Woven Drops

First make a long, narrow lazy daisy stitch. Then bring the thread back up just under the tip and weave back and forth back towards the starting point. These make nice accent pieces.

Next time

The next embroidery installment will be Part 3, two small projects for the lazy daisy stitch. Stay tuned!

Welcome to Lesson Five of Embroidery for Beginners. This installment of the vintage embroidery series focuses on embroidering lazy daisy stitches. Although we may know how to make the stitch, it has lots of variations that you might enjoy using. In fact, this one lesson offers eleven different stitches, plus several project options. Because of this, Lesson Five appears in three articles rather than the usual two. We have a lot of material to cover.

First, if you haven’t done the lazy daisy stitch, you’ve surely seen it in embroidery. It’s that loopy stitch used to make flowers. Sometimes it appears as open leaves below a flower.

The stitch actually had several names. Early on it was called the bird’s eye stitch because workers thought it resembled the eye of a bird. Perhaps they found the stitch useful for making simple eyes for the birds that appeared on so many embroideries at the turn of the century, 1890-1910. It got its common name, lazy daisy stitch, from the way it resembled the daisy petal and its perfect use in representing the flower on fabric. In the Twenties it became known as the loop stitch although you can see that didn’t stick, although it was accurate.

Actually, the lazy daisy stitch is a single chain stitch. We covered the chain stitch in Lesson Two. Even in the Twenties the lazy daisy stitch was maligned. Many designers considered it “too easy” and thus omitted it from pieces. This is unfortunate, because the lazy daisy stitch adds so much to the mountainside and cottage flower gardens which were so popular at the time.

The point of this lesson was to show that yes, the lazy daisy stitch provides the easiest way to make a daisy. However, its use extends far beyond the simple daisy into some intricate-looking needlework.

The daisy stitch

Here you see the needle making a daisy-style flower. Begin without placing a knot at the end of the thread, as usual. Make two or three tiny running stitches along a line that will be covered by the thread to hold the strands in place.

Bring the needle, with all the working thread, up from below at the base of the petal. Put it down again in nearly the same place, perhaps a couple threads to the right or left. At the same time, hold the thread on the surface under your left thumb as though you were making a buttonhole stitch. Bring the needle out at the tip of the petal, over the thread strand or strands. Draw up the thread gently and evenly to form the petal, and then put the needle through the fabric just outside the loop. This forms a tiny stitch to hold the loop in place.

Bring the needle up at the base of the next petal and repeat.

For large petals, use a rather heavy thread. If you use stranded embroidery floss, use enough strands in the needle to give each petal a full look.

Leaf spray in lazy daisy stitch

Here is a leaf spray made in the same stitch, with a stem made in back stitch. First create the back stitch stem, and then place the leaves onto it. Work the lazy daisy stitches as you come to them, back and forth under the stem, finishing with the loop at the end.

Tree or Leaf Stitch

This variation of the lazy daisy stitch makes beautiful leaves. You begin at the top point of the leaf.

Make a lazy daisy stitch to start, bringing the needle out at the top left of the first stitch and back down at the top right. Then to secure the loop, bring the needle out just a bit to the left of the first stitches, and put it in a bit to the right. As you see, this will make the center holding stitches slant just a little.

For your second stitch bring it out a bit below and to the left of the fist stitch, and back in a little to the right and below the first daisy. Your holding stitch should appear under the first one, also slightly slanted. Continue in this way until the leaf is completed.

Separated lazy daisy stitches

Sometimes when you are embroidering lazy daisy stitches, you want a different effect. Here the stitches march in a line, creating a loose border. The stitches are made exactly the same as a regular daisy stitch. But instead of returning to the center for the next loop, the needle continues in a straight line.

Next time

Next time I’ll introduce three more variations. In Part 3 we’ll put it all together with a six-inch round medallion and a five and a half inch flowerpot that would make a beautiful scarf decoration. Both are made almost entirely with lazy daisy stitches and variations.